LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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THE 



MOBBRLY PULPIT. 



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« ^ BY 



J.^'C? REYNOLDS, ■ 

President of Christian University, Canton, Mo 



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♦/ A 



ST\ LOUIS: 
Christian Publishing Company 

1881/ 










Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, 

By J. C. REYNOLDS, 

Id the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 




TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 

AT MORERLY, MO., 

THIS LITTLE VOLUME OF SERMONS IS 

DEDICATED, 

AS AN EXPRESSION OP THE AUTHOR'S GRATITUDE FOB 

GREAT CHRISTIAN KINDNESS 

SHOWN HIM BY MANY MEMBERS OP THAT CHURCH. 



INTRODUCTION, 

There is no apology offered for the appearance of another book, 
for the addition of another little volume to the Christian Literature 
of the nineteenth century. It is the duty of Christians of every age 
to study the Scriptures. They are commanded to have the Scrip- 
tures dwelling in them richly. Obedience to this apostolic require- 
ment necessitates careful study of the Bible. Full and entire com- 
pliance with Paul's precept can only be had by close, even critical 
study of the words of Christ, the apostles, and the prophets. Any 
book that will aid its readers in the accurate understanding of the 
divine writings, or that will strengthen their faith in Christ, in his 
promises and in his threatenings, has a right to appear and to claim 
a share of the attention of the reading public. 

Believing that this little volume will do these things for those who 
shall give it a candid and careful reading, the author modestly offers 
it to all classes of readers. He confidently looks for some degree of 
appreciation from those who read carefully, think logically, and dig 
beneath the surface. 

Believing that it is a good thing to exalt Christ in the hearts of the 
people, the first two sermons are devoted to an effort to reach a strictly 
Scriptural development of the Divine Nature of Christ, and the next 
two to a like development of his Human Nature. The fifth and sixth 
ermons teach of Christ as the Mediator between God and man, and 
the seventh is devoted to a careful presentation of Christ as our great 
High Priest. These seven discourses are all wholly devoted to the 
study of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

The eighth, is a Baccalaureate Sermon, delivered before the grad . 
uating class of Christian University in 1880. 



INTRODUCTION. 

The ninth sermon is devoted to the Christian Duty of Self-Control 
as taught in the New Testament, and the tenth to Everlasting Pun- 
ishment, as taught in the word of God. The eleventh sermon is 
devoted to the Duty of Christian Giving, and the twelfth is an Inaug- 
ural Address before the officers and students of Christian University. 

The book is called The Moberly Pulpit, because all the sermons 
except the eighth, eleventh and twelfth were preached in the Christian 
Church in Moberly, Missouri, and the author was Pastor of that 
church during the time of their preparation and delivery. 

With a humble prayer that the Lord will bless it, and that it may be 
instrumental in doing good, the book is modestly submitted to the 
public. 



CONTENTS. 



PA«E. 

SERMON I. 
The Divine Nature of Christ, 13 

SERMON II. 
The Divine Nature of Christ, Concluded, ... - .25 

SERMON III. 
The Human Nature of Christ, 38 

SERMON IV. 
The Human Nature of Christ, Concluded, - - - 51 

SERMON V. 
Christ, the Mediator, 64 

SERMON VI. 
Christ, the Mediator, Concluded, - 77 

SERMON VII. 

Christ, the High Priest, 95 

SERMON VIII. 
Baccalaureate, - -- - 107 

SERMON IX. 
Self-Control, - - ■ 119 

SERMON X. 
Everlasting Punishment, 131 

SERMON XI. 
Christian Giving, ---- 14.6 

SERMON XII. 
Inaugural Address, 155 



SERMON I, 

THE DIVINE NATURE OF CHRIST, 

Preached Lord's Day, March 24, 1880. 



TEXT.— " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
-God, and the Word was God."— John i : 1, 

My Dear Brethren and Sisters : 

Your solemn attention is, this morning, asked to the loftiest 
theme upon which the human mind has ever been called to 
-think. That theme is : 

THE DIVINE NATURE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 

The term nature is defined by Webster to be: "The sum of 
-qualities and attributes which make a thing what it is as distinct 
from others; native character; created or essential quality; 
peculiar constitution." Webster also defines divinity to mean : 
"The state of being divine; the nature or essence of God ; deity ; 
godhead." These definitions seem to be sound, and they are cer- 
tainly clear. Our work is, to find "the sum of the qualities and 
attributes" of Christ which make him " distinct" from other 
men. We, of course, admit that Jesus was a man. We believe 
liim to have been possessed of our human nature. We believe 
more than this. We believe that he is now possessed of human 
nature. We believe that he bore it away from earth when he 
ascended up on high, and we believe that human nature is glo- 
rified in heaven in hi« person. 

But our present task is to show that he is in his nature, in the 
very essence of his being, divine. We propose to prove that he 
is divinity's self, that he is God. There is none in all the uni- 
b 13 



14 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

verse like him. He is God. He is man. He is both human and 
divine, both God and man at the same time. Matthew says :.- 
" They shall call his name Emmanuel; which being interpreted, 
is, God with us." It is beyond all question true that the apostle' 
understood him to be God in some sense. If in no sense of the 
word Godhood can be predicated of Jesus, it was a mistake to 
call him Emmanuel, or else Matthew misinterpreted the word. 
But Matthew wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, 
and of course made no mistakes. Jesus is the God-man, and' 
was called Emmanuel for that very reason. 

Let any candid man, possessed of good common sense, care-- 
fully study Matthew i : 18-25, inclusive, and Luke i : 26-38, in- 
clusive, and he must come to the conclusion that God was the 
Father and Mary was the mother of Jesus. After a candid 
study of those two Scriptures no man can consistently deny his 
parentage without denying the truth of the history itself. All 
ofispring has the nature of its parents. God being the Father, 
and Mary being the mother, Jesus combined the divine and hu- 
man natures into one, and consequently was most appropriately 
called Emmanuel, " God with us." 

We can not know all about God. "We can not fathom infinity v 
nor comprehend eternity. But we can continually learn of God 
and know more and more about him from day to day. We have- 
some tolerably well defined ideas of his character, derived from 
the manifestations of his attributes, both in his revealed word 
and in his works. All Bible scholars award to him infinity. He 
is absolutely unlimited. He is limitless. He is illimitable. All 
Bible students agree in the following propositions concerning 
him : 

1. He is eternal. He is without beginning of days, and will 
never cease to be. 

2. He is omnific. He is creative, able to create any thing, all 
things. 

3. He is omnipotent. He possesses unlimited power, is all 
powerful. 

4. He is omniscient. He is unlimited in knowledge. 

5. He is omnipresent. He is every where present at the same 
time. 

These five propositions are only a few statements as to the 
attributes of the Great Jehovah. They are only^a part of the- 



THE DIVINE NATURE OF CHRIST. 15 

manifestations of his character. But they are enough for one 
discourse. 

Now, if I can prove that Jesus possessed, and exhibited all 
or any of these attributes, I will have proved th at he is divine, 
that the divine nature is in him. We begin with the first : 

JESUS IS ETERNAL. 

Now let us hear Jesus himself: " And now, O Father, glorify 
thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with 
thee before the world was." Here the Savior prays while on 
earth, and in the flesh, for glory. Yet he prays not for new 
glory; but for the old glory that he had formerly possessed. 
At the time that he uttered this prayer he was in a state of 
humiliation. But he longs for the glory that he had enjoyed 
with the Father. He had possessed that former glory "before 
the world was," before this world was created. Certain it is, 
then, that Christ's being, and Christ's glory antedate this world. 
If Christ be not eternal, he began to be sometime. But he did 
not begin to be at any time since the existence of this world, .. 
for he says that he had glory with the Father "before the world 
was." All that this lacks of proving the eternity of Christ is^. 
that it is possible, that there are older creations, older than this 
world. If there be no created thing older than this world, then, 
Christ is eternal, for he is older than this world. 

But let us hear Paul on this point : " And he" (Christ) " is 
before all things and by him all things consist." Col. i : 17. This 
is said in immediate connection with the creation of all things 
in heaven and in earth, the creation of things visible and things 
invisible. This makes our Lord antedate all things created. 
He is older than the first thing created in this universe. Then, 
he is eternal, and there is no escape frorn^ this conclusion. But 
nothing is eternal but God. Christ, then, being eternal, is God. 

Our second proposition is : 

HE IS OMNIFIC. 

He is creative. He is the Creator. Proof: "God, who at 
sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past unto 
the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto 
us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by 
whom also he made the worlds." 

This you will recognize as the beginning of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. It is unequivocally declared that God made the. 



-£6 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

worlds by his Son. But how did God make the worlds by his 
Son ? What part did the Son play in world making? Was he 
merely an instrument in the hands of the Creator like a sickle 
in the hands of the reaper, or a sword in the hands of the sol- 
dier? Or did he in full accord with the will of the Father go 
forth and himself do the work of creating worlds ? These are 
proper questions, and they naturally arise in your minds. 
Whether we shall be able to fully answer these questions in the 
light of this single passage, it is not now necessary to determine, 
for we will take it in connection with other Scriptures. But, 
first, let us get what we certainly can from this Scripture alone. 
<God is here said to have done three things : 

1. He spoke to the fathers. 

2. He spoke to the people of the writer's day. 

3. He, also, made the worlds. 

But did God do any of these things in his own person or di- 
•rectly? No. He spoke to the fathers "by the prophets." The 
prophets did the speaking. He spoke to the people of the 
apostolic day " by his Son." His Son did the speaking. He 
also made the worlds by his Son. Did not his Son do the world 
making ? Was he not Creator ? This is certain then, that Christ, 
to say the least of it, was an active participant in the work of 
making the worlds. 

The Unitarian who seeks to escape the creative character of 
Christ, who denies that he is omnific, would object at this point, 
and learnedly tell us that the Greek word aion, the accusative 
case plural of which, is, in this passage rendered worlds, does 
not mean the physical worlds. That the word does not always 
mean this, is most readily granted. But that it applies to the 
material worlds in this place is stoutly maintained. Of course 
this is not the primary meaning of tfee word. But all words 
are used in more than their primary uses. It is claimed by those 
who deny the divine nature of Christ, that worlds mean the 
Jewish and Christian ages, or dispensations in this passage. 
But that will not do. For they were established by the speak- 
ings by the prophets, and by the speaking of the Son, but the 
making of the worlds was a distinct work. God spoke by the 
prophets, and spoke by the Son, but he also made the worlds 
toy his Son. This was a separate and distinct work. 

Not only so, but the writer of the Hebrew Epistle iu the elev- 



THE DIVINE NATURE OF CHRIST. IT 

enth chapter and third verse, uses this language : " Through 
faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word 
of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things 
which do appear." "Worlds in this verse comes from the same 
Greek word, and is evidently applied to the material worlds, 
the worlds that are seen. The meaning of the verse is, that by 
laith we understand that the visible earth, sun, moon, planets 
and stars were not made out of materials furnished to hand, but 
that they were created, made out of nothing, by the word of 
God. But the things which are seen are the material universe* 
In the other passage, first quoted, they are said to be made by 
the Son. 

Paul, in Col. i : 16, 17, says of Christ : " By him were all 
things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible 
and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or princi- 
palities or powers : all things were created by him, and for him." 
Then comes the verse before quoted : " And he is before all 
things, and by him all things consist." 

Things visible include every thing in the universe that can be 
seen by the eye. Earth, moon, sun, all the planets, stars, comets, 
meteors, mountains, seas, flowers, trees, birds, beasts, human 
bodies. Things invisible include all existences in the universe 
not visible to the eye. Life, whether vegetable, animal, human 
or angelic, is invisible. You can see a tree, its trunk, its roots, 
its branches, its flowers, its leaves, its fruit, but you can not see 
its life, its vital force. You can see an animal body but you can 
not see its life. You may take a healthy man weighing two 
hundred pounds when all his vital forces are in their normal 
condition, and lower him into a well filled with carbonic acid 
gas, and he is a dead man instantaneously. Draw his 
body out, put it on the scales, it weighs two hundred pounds. 
No part of the material man is gone, yet the man is- 
gone. The vital force is no more. The man's spirit has also 
fled. The spirit will not for a moment occupy a dead body. 
But you never saw a spirit, not even your own spirit. From 
the top of a chimney let fall a brick. With great velocity it 
falls to the ground. Why does it not fall the other way ? 

You tell me that gravity draws it with an irresistible force 
towards the center of the earth. True. But did you ever see- 
gravity ? No, you did not. Yet we are sure that wherever 



18 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

matter is, gravity is there also. Wherever material is, the im- 
material is there also as its counter part. But every thing that 
is, either is visible or invisible. We can conceive of nothing 
that is not one or the other. Now Paul, under the inspiration 
of the Holy Spirit declares that all things visible, that all things 
invisible, were created; yes, created; that is the word; all 
things ; not some things ; but all things were created by our 
Lord Jesus Christ. And, as if to cut off all cavil Paul also says 
that all things that are in heaven, that are in earth, were created 
by him. 

Now, brethren, try to think of some creature, if you can, that 
is neither in the heavens, nor on the earth, that is neither visible 
nor invisible. Well, of course you can not do it. If you could 
conceive of such a creature, you would have to locate him some- 
where, and if you even could do that, you would still be unable 
to find a place, state, or condition, between visibility and invis- 
ibility. Then Jesus is omnific. Jesus is the Creator. He who 
has created can create. But if Jesus be omnific, he is to all in- 
tents and purposes divine. No creature can create. He who 
creates exists before the creature. Hence, Paul says truly that 
M He is before all things." 

Again Paul says that "By him all things consist." All things 
mean and include the things in heaven and the things on earth, 
the things visible and the things invisible. They consist, stand 
in their places, keep their relative positions in the present 
tense, in the year 1880, in the month of March, to-day, at this 
moment, because our Lord Jesus Christ holds them to their 
places. Why does not the moon come rushing pell-mell upon 
the earth, crushing both bodies into fragments, and destroying 
•every living thing? You tell me that they are balanced, the 
one against the other, that they are held in equilibrium by 
the law of gravity. But we have seen that gravity is a 
subtle, invisible, immaterial influence. We have also seen 
that Jesus created that invisible something called gravity. 
Gravity is perhaps nothing more than the Creator's thought or 
will applied to all matter. Certain it is, that he is the author 
of it, and controls it, and that the worlds are enabled to keep 
their places by him. The third verse of the first chapter of 
Hebrews says of Christ : " Who being the brightness of his 
glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all 



THE DIVINE NATURE OF CHRIST. 19 

things by the word of his power, when he had by himself 
purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on 
high." This is said in immediate connection with the state- 
ment that by him the worlds were made. "Upholding all 
things by the word of his power " certainly teaches that the 
present stability of the universe depends on him. He holds 
and upholds the worlds by the exercise of his divine power. 

But we turn to another Bible writer and quote his words. 
The apostle John says : "In the beginning was the "Word and 
the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same 
was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, 
and without him was not anything made that was made." 

In this Scripture everything is ascribed to Jesus that it is 
possible to ascribe to a perfect Jehovah. Both his eternity and 
divinity, and infinity, too, are taught here. The phrase "in the 
beginning " is the same as used by Moses in giving the history 
of the original creation. " In the beginning," expresses the 
period of the first creative act of the infinite Jehovah. Noth- 
ing, absolutely nothing, goes before the "beginning" but God 
himself. God, and only God, antedates the " beginning." But 
John, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, says that the 
Logos — Word — was already in existence "in the beginning." 
' The Logos — Word — was with God. The Word had a common 
existence with God. But the Logos — Word — was God. But 
every Bible student knows that John means by the Word simply 
Jesus Christ. We shall do no violence to the sense if we put 
Jesus in the place of the Logos in the passage. For John says : 
"The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." The Logos 
— Word — made flesh, was Jesus Christ. He was made flesh in 
his conception and birth of the virgin Mary. He dwelt among 
us in Bethlehem, in Nazareth, in Bethany, in Galilee, in Judea, 
and in Jerusalem, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, teach- 
ing his disciples and doing his mighty works. 

But this Word that was made flesh in Judea was with God 
in " the beginning," and "was God." Can language be plainer ? 
Is not a man who persists in making Christ inferior, obsti- 
nately unbelieving ? The plain statement of the apostle is easily 
understood. How the Word was God in the beginning, and 
how the Word was made flesh, may be too high, too deep, too 
profound for us. We may never in this life be able to under- 



20 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

stand how. But the propositions that the Word was God and 
that the Word was made flesh are so straight forward, and 
couched in words so simple and so plain, that we can not fail to 
see the facts. Let us, brethren, with a faith that staggers not, 
lay hold on Jesus who was God " in the beginning," and who 
" was made flesh " for our sakes. Let us accept in full assurance 
of faith the facts, whether we can fathom the how or the why 
or not. Our salvation does not depend upon our philosophy ; 
but remember, brethren, that "without faith it is impossible to 
please" our God. Our philosophy is a matter of little conse- 
quence, but our faith is a matter of the most transcendent 
importance. The unlettered rustic often outstrips the learned 
scientist in the Christian race. While the one is wasting his 
time in trying to harmonize the claims of Jesus with his philos- 
ophy, and not being always able to do that, rejects him;'' the 
other, believing all that God has said, accepts of him, trusts 
him, obeys him, and goes forward in the straight and narrow 
way toward the heavenly land. 

"All things were made by him." All things were made by 
Jesus Christ, is the apostle's meaning. " Without him was not 
anything made that was made." The Greek word here ren- 
dered, was made, is defined in the Lexicon to Bagster's Greek 
New Testament primarily, "to come into existence; to be 
created, exist by creation." This is high authority. The defi- 
nitions must be received as correct. The fact is that all things, 
all creatures, came into existence by Jesus Christ. "Without 
him was not anything made that was made," accurately ren- 
dered from the Greek, reads: Without him not one thing 
came into existence that did come into existence. Certainly 
nothing can be plainer than the fact that Jesus was and is the 
Creator of all things that have come into existence in this 
boundless universe. Whether suns, planets, satellites, stars, 
comets or swiftly shooting meteors, Jesus, our King, brought 
them into existence. Whether birds, beasts or fishes, whether 
microscopic infusoria or the huge elephant, Jesus, our Lord, 
brought them into existence. Whether men or angels, 
possessed of undying spirits, Jesus, our elder Brother, brought 
them into existence. Himself self-existent, and uncreated, he 
is the author of all created existence. 

" In him was life " is another truth recorded of him by John. 



THE DIVINE NATURE OF CHRIST. 21' 

He created all lower forms of life ; but life was in him before 
there was any created or creature life. When was life in him ? 
"In the beginning." That, then, was eternal life, for it pre- 
ceded all creature life. But hear John again, in the first chap- 
ter and first verse of his first epistle : " That which was from 
the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with 
our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have 
handled of the Word of Life." Now, this is the same Word, 
the same Logos, spoken of in the Scripture already examined. 
It is here called "the Word of life." Of this "Word of life," 
John asserts three things : 1. We have heard it. 2. We have 
seen it with our eyes. 3. We have handled it with our hands. 
When did John and the other disciples hear, and see, and handle 
this Word of life "which was from the beginning?" The 
answer must be, when " the Word was made flesh and dwelt 
among us." What kind of life was in him ? The next verse- 
gives the answer: "For the life was manifested and we have 
seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you tbat eternal life- 
which was with the Father, and which was manifested unto us." 
That settles it. It was eternal life that was in Jesus that the 
disciples heard and saw and handled, and which they have 
declared to us. But if eternal life was in him at the beginning 
there is no escape from the conclusion, that he is himself both 
eternal and the Creator of all life. 

But let us go one step farther. John says again : "And thi& 
is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life 
is in his Son. He that hath the Son, hath life ; and he that hath 
not the Son bath not life." Here, again, we find eternal life in 
the Son. We have already seen that eternal life was in him at 
the beginning. But in this place we find it in him on earth. 
The record here is that God has given us eternal life. God 
gave his Son to man as a gift. He is God's best gift to us. But 
eternal life was in his Son. And when he became a gift to us 
we received the life eternal that was and is in him. " He that 
hath the Son hath life." Eternal life and the divine nature are 
thus made accessible to men, in the Son. He who opens the 
door of his heart and lets Jesus come in, at the same time lets 
eternal life come in ; lets the divine nature come in ; lets the 
Holy Spirit come in ; lets the Father come in. When a man 
opens the door of his heart to Jesus, the devil goes out ; his- 



22 THE MOBEKLY PULPIT. 

past sins go out; the inordinate love of the world goes out; 
malice goes out; envy goes out; hypocrisy goes out; vain, 
foolish pride goes out ; hardness of heart goes out, and rebellion 
against God goes out. When Jesus comes in, hatred gives place 
■to love ; revenge gives place to mercy ; covetousness gives place 
to benevolence ; corrupt thoughts give place to pure ones ; un- 
holy desires give place to chaste ones ; and the love of the world 
gives place to the love of the things which are above. 
Our third proposition is: 

HE IS OMNIPOTENT. 

He possesses and exercises unlimited power. We use the 
word power in two senses. We mean by it, sometimes author- 
ity, and sometimes might or strength. In the former sense we 
say that the governor has power to pardon a convicted crim- 
inal. No other man in the State is clothed with the authority 
to do such an act. In the latter sense we attribute power to a 
man possessed of great physical strength. We say that he is a 
powerful man. We say the same of a man endowed with great 
intellectual faculties. We call him a powerful man, too. In 
this sense, power means about the same as ability. Having one 
word to represent two or more ideas makes our language 
frequently ambiguous. In the Greek language there are two 
words, one for each of these two ideas. Exousia means author- 
ity, and dunamis means ability. These words both occur very 
frequently in the Greek Scriptures. We propose to prove that 
Jesus exercises power in both senses without limit. If we do 
that, then he is also omnipotent as well as eternal and omnific. 
Jesus himself says : "All power is given unto me in heaven 
and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing 
them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Spirit ; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
have commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
the end of the world." This is the Great Commission. In it 
the word power comes from exousia — authority. He does not 
claim authority merely, some authority, in heaven, on earth, 
but he assumes to exercise all power both in heaven and on 
earth. There is no rule, no authority anywhere, no prerogative 
in the universe that does not of right belong to him. He over- 
tops all authorities. There is no ruler higher than he. When 
he commands, it is with the authority of heaven and earth, with 



THE DIVINE NATURE OF CHRIST. 23 

the authority of God, angels and men. He is unlimited here. 
He is omnipotent at this point. 

In the sense of ability or might he is absolutely unlimited, as 
is shown by the following considerations and facts : 

1. He created the worlds. This has been abundantly proven 
already. Less than omnipotence can not create, can not make 
a world without materials. There can be no higher exhibition 
of power than to create. 

2. He displayed unlimited power in raising the dead, opening 
blind eyes, causing the deaf to hear and the lame to walk, 

3. He displayed omnipotence in laying down his life for the 
world, and taking it again. Of his life he said : " No man 
taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power 
to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." He died 
.and rose again. This is proof enough of omnipotent power. 

Our fourth proposition is : 

HE IS OMNISCIENT. 

He is not ignorant of any thing. He knows all things. He 
is the only person who has lived on this earth who never made 
a mistake, who never uttered an indiscreet word. He never 
became entangled in his teachings. Though assailed by Scribe 
and Pharisee, he was never embarrassed. He always gave the 
best answer that could be given. The explanation of it is, he 
knew all things. At the age of twelve years he outstripped all 
the learning of all the doctors in Jerusalem. He knew the 
thoughts of the hearts of the people. He knew beforehand 
that Judas would betray him. He knew that Peter would deny 
him three times. He knew the time when he would deny him. 
He knew it before Peter had thought of such a thing. He 
knew that Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed. He 
knew that he would rise from the dead. He knew that his 
disciples would be persecuted, imprisoned, put to death. But 
we have not time to follow this thought farther now. But we 
have no fear nor doubt in declaring him omniscient. 

Our fifth proposition is: 

HE IS OMNIPRESENT. 

He is everywhere present at the same time. This is verified 
by his promises. He is gone into heaven, but he has promised 
to be with us on the earth, too. We will content ourselves on 
iihis point with only one of his precious promises. He has said 



24 THE MOBEKLY PULPIT. 

that "Where two or three are met together in my name, there- 
will I be in the midst." We, beloved brethren, are now assem- 
bled in his blessed name. He is in our midst ; not visible to 
eyes of flesh, but none the less certainly present. He is visible 
to the eye of faith. Let not the eye of faith become dim. The 
eyes of flesh wear out, but the eye of faith ought never to fail, 
nerer to grow old, ought to grow brighter and brighter until 
we cross the Jordan. 

But Jesus is not with us only. He is, at the same time, with 
his disciples in Paris, in St. Joseph, in Chicago, in Kansas City, 
in Cincinnati, in St. Louis — everywhere. The promise is to 
them as well as to us. Let us be solemn now ! Jesus is here I 
Let no hypocrisy lurk in any heart here. He sees it if it be 
here. Oh I let us realize how solemn and how good a thing it 
is to meet with the Lord. Lift up your souls in thankfulness 
to our God to-day, brethren, that we can call the eternal, om- 
nific, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Son of God, our 
beloved elder Brother. 

Now, is there a sin-sick soul here to-day who is willing to 
open the door of his heart and let Jesus come in ? If so, while 
the brethren sing, 

" Come, humble sinner, in whose breast," 
come, give us your hand in token of your desire to confess him- 
before men. 



SERMON II, 

THE DIVINE NATURE OF CHRIST, 

CONCLUDED. 
Preached Lord's Day, April 4, 1880. 



Text.— "I and my Father are one."— Jesus. 

Hy Dear Brethren and Sisters : 

To-day we will continue the study of the Divine Nature of 

•Christ. In the preceding discourse we proved Christ to be 
eternal, omnific, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. To- 
day we will consider his oneness with the Father. This one- 
ness, we shall see, involves his divine nature. We will hear the 
Savior himself on this transcendently glorious theme. There 
was a man, at the pool Bethesda, who had been suffering with 
an infirmity of thirty-eight years' standing. To this poor man 
Jesup, on a Sabbath day, said: "Kise, take up thy bed and 
walk." The man was thus, immediately, entirely cured of his 
malady. The Jews sought to take the life of Jesus for doing 
this good deed on the Sabbath. 

To these persecuting, murderous Jews, Jesus said: u My 
Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The Jews were more 
angry than ever, and " sought the more to kill him, because he 
not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was 
his Father, making himself equal with God." The Jews cer- 
tainly understood him to claim equality with God. This he did 
not disavow. They looked upon him simply as a man, and to 
them it was an awful thing for him to claim equality with the 
God of Israel. With the Jews, the claiming God for his Father 
was equivalent to claiming equality with God. Jesus knew 

25 



26 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

that, and knowing that, he said : "My Father worketh hither- 
to, and I work." At this point one of two things is true : 
Either Jesus misled the Jews knowingly, or else he did claim 
equality with God. The former can not be entertained for a 
moment. Then the latter is true. But if Jesus claimed equal- 
ity with God, he is equal with Him, and therefore, divine. 

But Christ did not stop at that. To the Jews he further said : 
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of him- 
self, but what he seeth the Father do." The Unitarian will 
struggle hard at this point to reduce Christ to the position of & 
creature. But he stops too soon. This is not the whole sen- 
tence. No man has a right to build a theory on a part of what 
the Savior says on a given topic. This is one of the fruitful 
sources of error. "We closed the quotation at a colon. This 
will not do. Let us quote again, and go on until we reach a 
period : " Yerily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing 
of himself, but what he seeth the father do: for what things, 
soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." What 
things soever, is sweeping. Anything that the Father does, the 
Son does also. If the Son can do anything and everything 
that the Father does, he is in ability to do, equal with the 
Father. But, if equal with the Father, he is infinite. But, if 
infinite, he is uncreated and divine. 

But Jesus goes on, and says : " For as the Father raiseth up 
the dead, and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth 
whom he will." The Jews believed that God could raise the 
dead. Jesus agreed with them in this, and thus there was one 
point of agreement between them and Jesus. This common 
ground he makes the basis of an argument in favor of his claim 
to being equal with God. The power to raise the dead, to 
quicken, to make the dead alive, was admitted to be a God-like 
power. It was admitted that it could only be done by God 
himself. The Jews believed that, and Christ did not for a 
moment controvert it. Yet he says, "Even so the Son quick- 
eneth whom he will." Now, if none but God can make alive, 
and that is admitted, for any one to claim to be able to do that 
is, in effect, to claim divinity, to claim to be God. This is just 
the thing to which Jesus does lay claim. Jesus does not 
quicken the dead simply as an agent empowered to raise some 
particular persons from the dead. " The Son quickeneth whom 



THE DIVINE NATURE OP CUBIST. 27 

he will." He has a will of his own in this work. The resur- 
rection of the dead, then, depends upon the will of Christ. If 
it were his will, we should remain under the dominion of death 
forever. But it is his will that we shall live again. He has 
given indubitable proof both of his will and his ability to exe- 
cute it in laying down his own life and taking it again. In his 
death, burial and resurrection we have the proof that he can 
quicken our mortal bodies. 

Let us hear Jesus still farther. He says: "For the Father 
judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the 
Son; that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the 
Father. He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father 
who hath sent him." These words of the Savior are recorded in 
the twenty- seeond and twenty-third verses of the fifth chapter 
of John. All the words thus far examined are in that chapter. 
Kemember that the contest is between Jesus and the Jews, 
they seeking to kill him for making himself equal with God, 
he not denying the charge, but justifying himself in exercising; 
the divine prerogative. In these last quoted words he claims 
the right and the power to exercise all judgment. The right 
and power of exclusive judgment is his. He was possessed of 
this right and this power, even when on the earth and in the flesh. 
To be the unerring Judge of all men requires more than the 
highest possible human or angelic qualities. Eternal conse- 
quences to every human being are involved in the rulings and 
decisions of this Judge. All human j udges are liable to err, and 
sometimes do err. Even when only earthly considerations are 
involved, there is provision made that an appeal may be taken 
from lower to higher courts ; so that if human wisdom, in human 
weakness, stumble, and justice be not done, another trial may 
be had, affording an opportunity to correct errors and undo 
wrongs. But here is one who has been appointed Chief Jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court of the Universe ; yea, more than 
Chief Justice; He is sole and only, the One Judge of the 
Supreme Court of Heaven and of Earth. From his decisions, 
for all eternity, there can be no appeal. The child of God may 
be and sometimes is, wronged and oppressed by human courts 
and human judges. But if all earthly tribunals fail him he has 
one final appeal to the Supreme Court whose Judge will never, 
never, NEVER, make an unrighteous decision. But such a 



28 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

Judge must have infinite wisdom, so that he may know the 
law perfectly, so that he may know the facts perfectly in every 
man's case, and so, also, that he may know every man's heart 
perfectly. This Judge is to do, in all cases, perfect justice. 
Without infinite wisdom to know the law, without infinite wis- 
dom to know the facts, without infinite wisdom to know the 
thoughts, motives, and purposes oi the heart of him who is 
judged, an erroneous decision might be made. But as no mis- 
takes will be charged upon the final Court, then we must award 
to the Judge infinite wisdom to know the right, infinite good- 
ness to choose the right, and infinite power to execute the right. 
But to award infinity to this Judge is equivalent to awarding 
him divinity. Then the Judge is possessed of the divine nature. 
He is divine. 

But let us now inquire the reason why "all judgment" has 
been committed to the Son ? The Son himself gives the answer. 
it is as follows: "That all men should honor the Son as they 
honor the Father." The Greek has not the word man in this 
quotation. It reads: "That all should honor the Son as they 
honor the Father." This does not confine the honor due to the 
Son to men, as King James' version does. All intelligences, 
below God himself, are to honor the Son. When ? Whenever 
they honor the Father. How? In every way that they honor 
the Father. How much? Just as much and just as fully as 
they honor the Father. Thus Jesus justifies himself in claim- 
ing equality with the Father. But further; it is impossible to 
honor the Father without honoring the Son. We have just 
seen that "all judgment" has been committed to the Son by 
the Father in order that all, both men and angels, should honor 
the Son as they honor the Father. Then it is the Father's will, 
that all should honor the Son as they honor the Father. Then 
to withhold equal honor from the Son is to contravene the will 
of the Father. But to contravene the will of the Father is dis- 
obedience. To treat Christ as in any way an inferior, is to 
oppose the Father's will. Then Unitarianism is sin. " He that 
honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father who hath sent 
him," says Christ. There is no way of honoring God, of hon- 
oring the Almighty Father, only by believing in, and loving, 
and obeying the "Crucified Que." This is necessarily true. 
u For in him (Christ) "dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead 



THE DIVINE NATURE OF CUEIST. 29 

bodily."— Paul. If you would honor the Godhead, you must 
do so in Christ, for it all dwells in him. 

But let us exmine this short sentence, from the apostle to the 
Gentiles. We quote it again : " For in him dwelleth all the full- 
ness of the Godhead bodily." Col. ii : 9. This is a wonderful 
utterance. We ought, with uncovered heads and with awe- 
stricken hearts, to contemplate this wonderfully sublime utter- 
ance. Remember that Paul, but not only Paul, but that God is 
talking about his Son. Paul is writing under the inspiration of 
the Holy Spirit. The Greek word here rendered Godhead is 
theotees. Its meaning, as defined by the best authority, is 
" divinity, deity, godhead." It also occurs with a little different 
orthography in Rom i : 20, being theiotees in that place, and is 
defined to mean: "divinity, deity, godhead, divine majesty .^ 
Now observe the following facts in numerical order : 

1. Divinity dwells in Christ. 2. Deity dwells in Christ. 3.- 
The Godhead dwells in Christ. 4. The divine majesty dwells in 
Christ. 5. The fullness of the divinity, of the deity, of the God- 
head, of the divine majesty, dwells in Christ. 6. All the fullness 
of the divinity, of the deity, of the Godhead, of the divine 
majesty, dwells in Christ. It is not some, or a part, or a degree 
of these things, but the fullness; yea, all the fullness of divinity,, 
deity, Godhead dwells in Christ. 7. This dwelling is in the 
present tense, in the now, when Paul wrote, and belongs to the 
present dispensation. 8. This dwelling is bodily. SomaWcos,. 
bodily, is from soma, the body. In the incarnation, God in, 
Christ took on human nature, took on man. In his death and 
resurrection, Christ redeemed that incarnate body from the 
dominion of death, and in his ascension bore it away from earth, 
and in his glorification changed it from terrestrial to celestial, 
from mortal to immortal, from fleshly to spiritual. So God in 
Christ puts on man, and man in Christ puts on God. In Christ 
God and man meet, and man, the sinner, made free from his 
sins, becomes God's child, and to eternal life an heir. 

Let us listen again to the words of Jesus, in the fifth of John : 
u Verily, verily, I say unto you ; the hour is coming, and now is, 
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God : and they 
that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in hiinseli, so 
hath he given to the Son to have life in himself." By the fiat 
of his word, Jesus while on earth, raised the dead. When he- 
c 



30 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

spoke the words : " Talitha, cumi, arise ! " . . . The young 
daughter of the ruler of the synagogue arose from the dead and 
lived again. When He said : " Young man, I say unto thee, 
arise ;" the son of the widow of Nain was made alive from the 
dead. When " he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth," 
Lazarus, in his cold grave heard the quickening voice of the 
Son of God and came up out of the tomb. " The hour is com- 
ing, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, 
and shall come torth ; they that have done good, unto the resur- 
rection of life ; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrec- 
tion of damnation." So says the Lord himself. No higher 
power can be exercised than that of giving life. As infinite 
and divine power was exercised in creating life in the begin- 
ning, no less a power can put life into the dead. Divine power 
only could have spoken life into the dead body of the little 
damsel ; and into the lifeless form of the widow's son ; and into 
the decaying flesh and bones of the brother of heart-broken 
Mary and Martha. It may be objected that the prophets and 
ihe apostles, in a few cases, raised the dead, and that they were 
and are not equal with God. True. But they did not raise the 
dead in their own name nor by their own power. Peter said to 
the lame man: "In the name of Jesus Christ, of Nazareth, rise 
up and walk." And he said to the multitude: "Be it known 
unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of 
Jesus Christ, of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised 
from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before 
you whole." This is the key to the miracles wrought by men. 
They were done in the name and by the power of God, delega- 
ted to them for that purpose. But Jesus healed the sick in his 
own name and by his own power. To the dead girl, he said : 
"I say unto thee arise." To the widow's dead son, on the road 
to the grave, he said, "Young man, I say unto thee, arise." 
To Lazarus, both dead and buried : " with a loud voice," he said, 
" come forth." He used no name but his own. As God breathed 
the breath of life into the dust-man, into the inanimate man, 
and thus imparted life where before there was no life, so Jesus 
exercising the same divine, life-giving power, spoke the word 
and life re-entered into the dead body of the daughter of the 
ruler of the synagogue and her youDg life began anew. Jesus 
spoke the word and life again entered the cold and stiffened 



THE DIVINE NATURE OF CHRIST. 31 

form of the young man of Nain ; the warm blood again coursed 
its way through his veins and the mantle of ruddy youth again 
mounted to the cheeks of the widow's son. Jesus spoke the 
word and the decomposition of the body of Lazarus is instantly 
suspended. The normal condition of his flesh is at once restored. 
The nerve tissues are again electrified with life and sensation. 
His manly eyes again sparkle with intelligence and brotherly 
love as he looked into the tear-bedewed countenances of his 
loving sisters, Mary and Martha. 

Why did Jesus do this ? How did he do it ? How could he 
do it? Because he had life in himself as the Father had life in 
himself. He had in himself all grades of life. He had all life 
in himself, and, being equal with God, he exercised the divine 
prerogative of giving life. WTierever and whenever he wills, he 
gives life. When he wills he will come again and speak with a 
voice that all in the grave, and in the deep, will hear, and when 
they hear that life-giving voice of the Son of God, they will 
oome forth. Not only so ; but he gives spiritual life to every 
sin-sick souLUrat comes to him in faith, in penitence, in obedi- 
ence to hifrj^i Those who are dead in trespasses and in sins, 
in submissioft^to the gospel, are made alive unto God by our 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

Now, let us sum up the things we have thus far learned of 
him. Let us enumerate the points of oneness between him and 
his Father. Let us count the points of equality between him 
and God: 1. We have seen that he is sole and infallible Judge. 
2. We have seen that he is entitled to equal honor with the 
Father, both from men and angels. 3. We have seen that he, 
equally with the Father, has quickening,that is, life-giving power. 
4. We have seen that he has life inherent, underived, within 
himself, as well as the Father. 5. vVe have seen that he quick- 
ens the sinful heart of the penitent sinner in the forgiveness of 
sins. 6. And, finally, we have seen that "what things soever" 
the Father " doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." This 
amounts to perfect equality, not only in power and wisdom, 
but also in will, in purpose, in desire, in affection. Well and 
truly did Jesus say : "I and my Father are one." 

But let us now turn our attention to the Savior's claim to 
equality with God in another direction. He claims equality 
with God as a Legislator, not only assuming and exercising the 



32 THE M0BERLY PULPIT. 

right to heal the diseased man at the pool Bethesda, on the- 
Sabbath day, in violation of the notions of propriety and right- 
eousness held by the Jews, but on another Sabbath day, when 
his disciples were hungry, they went through the fields of grain 
not yet harvested, and plucked and did eat. This was thought 
by the Pharisees to be a grievous infraction of the law of 
Moses. His first reply to their chidings was sufficient to silence- 
them, if they had been aware that consistency was then, as well 
as now, a jewel. He reminded them that David and his sol- 
diers, when pinched with hunger, ate the Shew bread, a thing 
which was a violation of the law. It was not lawful for any to- 
eat this bread except the priests. Yet, under the circumstan- 
ces of pressing hunger, the Pharisees themselves did not con- 
demn David for eating sanctified bread, contrary to the letter 
of the Law. Then why condemn Christ for allowing his disci- 
ples to satisfy the gnawiugs of hunger, to pluck a few heads 
of the ripening barley or wheat and rub out the new grains in 
their hands on the Sabbath day ? Then he reminded them of 
the fact that the priest violated their slavish interpretation of 
the law in preparing and making the offerings on tbe Sabbath. 
Then why condemn him ? They were, to say the least of it, 
guilty of great inconsistency. 

But Christ makes two more replies to their criticism of his 
conduct on the Sabbath :^1. ''But I say unto you, that in this 
place is one greater than the temple." This greater one is him- 
self. The tabernacle was built by Moses according to a divine 
pattern, and the temple was built by Solomon after the same 
model. The law of God regulated the worship both in the 
tabernacle and temple. Jesus is greater than Moses and greater 
than Solomon, greater than the temple. He had as good a 
right, with his disciples, to vary from the letter of the Law as 
David with his followers had, yet the Pharisees justified David 
and condemned Christ. He had as good a right to vary from 
the letter of the law as had the priests, yet they found no fault 
with the priests, but censured Jesus. But Jesus utterly routs 
them by asserting his superiority over the temple and all con- 
nected with it. It mattered little after all whether the hunger 
of the disciples constituted an emergency equal to the one 
under which David and the young men with him acted or not. 
Jesus himself being greater than the temple, greater than the= 



THE DIVINE NATUKE OF CHRIST. 33 

law governing the service of the temple, had both the right and 
the power to suspend the law, to modify the law, to repeal the 
law, and to fulfill the law. But no power is competent to 
<jhange, suspend, or disannul the law that is not equal to the 
power that made the law. God was the Lawgiver who enacted 
the law governing the temple worship. But Jesus claimed the 
right to suspend the law in this case. Then he is equal with 
God. To escape this conclusion, the objector would have to 
show that Christ made a false claim. He would have to show 
that Jesus made a false statement in saying : " But I say unto 
you, that in this place is one greater than the temple." But 
that will hardly be undertaken. Then the Savior, being equal 
with God, is divine. 

2. " For the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day." 
The Sabbath was an institution of divine appointment. The 
observance of the seventh day of the week rested solely on the 
authority of a legal enactment. It was lawful to worship God 
on that day, but there were many things unlawful to be done 
on that day that might be lawfully done on other days. But 
Jesus claimed to be Master of the Sabbath, to be greater than 
the Sabbath. This is claiming higher authority than the law 
that established the Sabbath, higher authority than the law 
governing the Sabbath. But God enacted the law creating the 
Sabbath and governing the Sabbath. Then no power can be 
greater, and no authority higher than this law and be not at the 
same time equal with God. Then our conclusion is again 
Teached that Jesus the Christ, is divine. 

From all the Scriptures thus far examined this morning, it is 
certainly quite clear that the loving Savior thought himself 
equal with God. He surely was profoundly impressed with the 
idea that the divine nature was in him. He certainly can not be 
charged with being self-deceived. It takes a bold skeptic 
indeed to assume that. On the other hand, can it be said that 
he knowingly made false pretensions? No intelligent infidel 
will undertake to establish that. 

We will occupy the remainder of our time this morning, in 
candidly and carefully examining a few Scriptures, that some 
people have thought to contradict the position that we have 
maintained in this, and the preceding discourse. Remember 
that our theme is the Divine Nature of Christ. All that con- 



34 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

trovert the position already argued, undertake to show that 
Christ is in some sense a creature, that he is inferior to the 
Father. Paul says that he " is the first-born of every creature." 
Paul uses this language, Col. i: 15. The strength of the Unita- 
rian position, if it has any strength, is the inference drawn from 
this language that Christ is a creature. It is said that " the first- 
born of every creature" must be a creature. To prove that 
Paul himselt did not even believe that he was a creature and 
did not mean to say it, we have only to quote this same passage 
more fully. Hear him : " Who is the image of the invisible God, 
the first-born of every creature, for by him were all things cre- 
ated, that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisi- 
ble." It is an absurdity to call the Creator a creature. And 
yet every man perpetrates that absurdity, who engrafts Unita- 
rianism on this passage. The reason assigned for calling him 
" the first-born of every creature," is that " by him were all 
things created." The word first-born is explained further in the 
seventeenth verse : "And he is before all things and by him all 
things consist." He is older than any created thing. Then, 
being the first-born of every creature does not mean that him- 
self is a creature, that he was created first. It can not mean 
that without contradicting the very next sentence in the same 
period, "for by him were all things created." Paul goes onr 
"And he is the head of the body, the Church ; who is the begin- 
ning, the first-born from the dead, that in all things he might 
have the pre-eminence, for it pleased the Father that in him 
should all fullness dwell." Pre-eminence, superiority, fullness, 
completeness, are the things aimed at in this struggle of words- 
to express to the human understanding, the grandeur and sub- 
limity of the character of the Son of God and the Son of man. 
Instead of reducing him to the rank of a creature, just the 
reverse is aimed at by the apostle in his wrestling with ideas of 
eternity and infinity. 

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of 
himself, but what he seeth the Father do." This quotation cuts 
a sentence in two. And by this violent procedure some men 
think that they prove Christ to be an inferior. But these 
words prove just the reverse, when taken in their proper con- 
nection. This language is in the fifth chapter of John and used 
by the Savior to the Jews when they sought to kill him for 



THE DIVINE NATURE OF CHRIST. 35 

making himself equal with God. It is a part of his defense 
against their persecutions. We have already seen that he did 
make himself equal with God. Yet he does it with heavenly 
modesty. He exalts the Father as highly as the Jews could 
have asked. "The Son can do nothing himself, but what he 
seeth the Father do," taken out of its connection, might be 
easily construed into an acknowledgment of inferiority, by a 
superficial thinker. But why this statement? Why could he 
do nothing of himself? Simply for the reason that he is " equal 
with God." If he were an inferior, if he were a mere crea- 
ture, he could have done a thousand things of himself. A sinful 
man can do many things of himself. Every sinner does all his 
wickedness of himself. Certainly God does not have any part 
in a wicked man's conduct. If Christ had done any thing of 
himself, any thing not according to his Father's will, any thing 
independently of his Father, that would have overturned his 
claim to equality with G od. But being with the Father equally 
wise, equally loving, equally just, equally divine, equally mer- 
ciful, and, both, being absolutely infinite, there could be no con- 
flict between them. There could be no separate action. In 
creation and in redemption, from all eternity to all eternity, 
they have acted and will act in unity and not separately. 

Now let us quote the whole statement at the expense of a lit- 
tle repetition : " Yerily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do 
nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do : for what 
things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." We 
have before considered the latter half of this Scripture. But 
we quote it here to show the correctness of the exegesis just 
given of the first half of it. We also ask your attention to 
another feature of these words of the Savior. Take notice, partic- 
ular notice, to two clear statements in this language: 1. That 
Jesus says he can do nothing "except what he sees the Father do. 
2. With equal clearness, he says: "What things soever" the 
Father does the Son does also. Now put these two statements 
together and it is as clear as the noonday sun that Jesus sees all 
that the Father does. To finite beings, the ways of G od are past 
findiug out, but to Jesus they are all open. To him they are all 
well known. To his eye they are all visible. He does them all 
too. If we had no other proof, this of itself establishes his 
divine nature. 



36 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

"I can of mine own self do nothing." This is part of the 
same conversation with the Jews. It is true, as we have seen, 
because he and the Father are one, are unity. In the nature of 
things there can not be two conflicting infinities. There 
may be any number of finite beings in conflict with one another. 
The finite may, for a time, wage a hopeless warfare with the 
infinite, but two, or more, infinities in conflict, or separate, or 
independent of each other, are an absurdity. God is infinite. 
Jesus is equal with God. Then Jesus is infinite. This is an 
absurdity if they act separately. But it is good sense and 
eternal truth as Jesus puts it. He says: "I and my Father are 
one." This will explain the seeming inferiority of the Son. 
All such expressions as those we have considered, that to the 
superficial mind, seem to indicate that our elder Brother is, or 
was an inferior, was a creature, when we dig down a little 
beneath the surface, show him to be divine, and eternal and 
infinite. 

Yet, with all that there is, in infinite power, wisdom, good- 
ness, love, and mercy, the Son of God came on a mission of 
love and of mercy to this world of sin and death and for a time 
suffered, and hungered, and thirsted, and was tempted, and 
sorrowed, and wept, and finally died, not for his own sake, but 
for our sakes. He puts forth infinite power, not in the storm 
cloud, not in the thunder bolt, not in the earthquake, not in the 
frightful cyclone, but in the gentle wooings of divine love and 
mercy he appeals to our hearts. He offers to us the infinite love 
of his great heart, and only asks that we allow him a place in 
our hearts. Do we have a responsive affection for him in our 
souls to-day, brethren ? Are we keeping his commandments? 
In a few moments we shall engage in the solemn duty of cele- 
brating his death. But does our faith lay hold of the mighty 
;fact that we commemorate? Do we gather the truth that the 
eternal, infinite one came condescendingly down to us because 
he loved us? Do we realize, that to rescue us from sin, and from 
death, he clothed himself in our nature, poured out his blood 
as an offering for our sins, and then entered into the dominions 
of death, fought our battle with "ihe king of terrors," and 
won for us the victory over the prince of darkness? Let us, 
beloved brethren, at this solemn moment, look down into our 
own souls, examine the motives of our hearts, bid deceit, hate, 



THE DIVINE NATURE OF CHRIST. 37 

^and the care of this world depart, and let the King of kings 
have full possession at this solemn moment. Let not the world 
intrude now! 

But there are many of our friends who have not yet accepted 
of the divine Savior; who have never confessed his name 
before men; who have not been "baptized into his death;" 
who are yet in their sins; who are yet under condemnation. 
We turn to you, now, and appeal to you, "to flee from the 
wrath to come." If death were to come to-day, he would find 
you unprepared, and your precious souls would be lost forever. 
Will you go on in sin, walking in the broad road that leads 
down to death? Is your soul burdened to-day with the guilt 
of sin? The loving Savior says: "Come unto me all ye that 
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my 
yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in 
heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is 
easy and my burden is light. Will you accept the Savior's 
invitation? While the brethren sing : 

" There is a fountain filled with blood," 
we ask you, in his name, to come ! 



SERMON III, 
THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST, 

Preached Lord's Day, April 11, 1880. 



Text. — " He took not on him the nature of angels : but he took on' 
him the seed of Abraham. "— Heb. ii: 16. 

My Dear Brethren and Sisters : 

As the two preceding discourses were devoted to the study 
of the divine nature of Christ, we devote our time this morning 
to the study of his human nature. In our first discourse we 
learned and proved that he was divinity and humanity united, 
that he was and is God, in man, as set forth in the Scriptures, in 
styling him Emmanuel. If he were only divine it would be im- 
possible for us to be saved from sin and death; and if he were 
only human our salvation would be an impossibility. The 
phrase, "Son of God," is applied to him very frequently, and the 
phrase, " Son of man," is applied to him with equal frequency. 
If it were not true that he was, and is, possessed of both 
natures, these two phraseologies would not be, and could not 
be applied to him as they are. The whole tenor of the Scrip- 
tures is to the effect that he is both divine and human. But, 
this morning, it is our business to look at the human side of 
Christ. But, while we do this, we abate not one "jot or tittle" 
from his perfect divinity already set forth. 

Whoever will carefully, and candidly, and thoroughly study 
Matt, i : 18-25 and Luke i : 34, 35, must be convinced that the 
divine and human were united in his conception. There was 
in his conception, in his birth, in his life, in his death, in his res- 
urrection, and in his glorification, and still continues to be in 
his reign, a perfect union of human nature and divine nature, 
in all their completeness and entirety and perfection. Let us- 
38 



THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 39' 

trace his earthly childhood's history, taking all the known 
events of his child life on earth : 

1. He was born of the virgin Mary, in Bethlehem. Matt, ii : 
1 ; Luke ii : 6, 7. 

2. A host of angels came from heaven to earth and announced 
his birth to Jewish shepherds by night. Luke ii : 8-14. 

3. The shepherds went to Bethlehem and saw the babe in the 
manger. Luke ii : 15-20. 

4. He was circumcised on the eighth day, according to the 
law of Moses. Luke ii : 21. His name was called Jesus at the 
same time. 

5. When he was forty days old he was taken to Jerusalem and 
presented to the Lord in due form, in the temple, according to 
the law. Luke ii : 22-24 ; Exodus xiii : 2 ; Lev. xii : 2-8. 

6. While in the temple, Simeon, an old man, under the inspi- 
ration of the Holy Spirit, took him up in his arms and blessed 
God. Under the impulse of the Spirit he recognized the Christ 
in the babe of the manger, then, forty days in the flesh. Anna, 
an aged prophetess, likewise recognized him as the Christ. 
Luke ii : 25-38. 

7. Next came the wise men, learned men from the East to 
Jerusalem, having seen a star that signified to them that a king 
of the Jews was born. They, finally, guided by the star, found 
him, and Joseph and Mary, in Bethlehem. They both wor- 
shiped him, and gave him costly gifts. Matt, ii : 1-12. 

8. Joseph warned of God of Herod's wrath, fled with him and 
his mother into Egypt. Matt, ii : 13. 

9. He dwelt in Egypt until after Herod's death. Matt, ii : 14, 15* 

10. God notified Joseph of the death of Herod, and he returned 
with the child and his mother from Egypt. Matt, ii : 19-21. 

11. The family residence, after the return from Egypt was in 
Nazareth and not Bethlehem. Matt, ii : 22, 23 ; Luke ii : 39. 

12. At twelve years of age he went with Joseph and Mary to 
Jerusalem to the feast of the Passover, and lingered in the tem- 
ple, talking with the Doctors and astonished them with his supe- 
rior wisdom. Indeed he astonished all who heard him. Luke 
ii: 41-51. 

This is the consecutive history of his childhood, as far as it is 
possible for us to know it. Any thing more than this is the- 
invention of cunning priests or wild guess-work. In the child 



40 THE MOBEKLY PULPIT. 

himself, all the human nature that is seen in other children, was 
also seen. In the star, in God's warning- to the wise men, in 
God's warning to Joseph, in the angelic visit to the shepherds is 
seen, very clearly, that God and angels are taking a very special 
interest in him. A superhuman future is portended for him in 
the prophecies of Simeon and Anna, in the temple. But these 
prophecies were the result of the impulse of the Spirit in the 
prophet, and prophetess, and not in any thing seen in the babe 
by human wisdom or foresight. This is put forth so clearly by 
Luke, that mistake is hardly possible. At the age of twelve he 
did once manifest remarkable wi sdom. Aside from this, his child 
life, as far as we know or can know it in this life, was as human 
as other children's lives. But after this, both his human nature 
and divine nature are exhibited in everything he said and every- 
thing he did. Sometimes one standing out more prominently, 
sometimes the other. But neither nature is almost never 
entirely out of sight, to the thinking mind. So that when we 
study one nature the other is always present, and we can not 
separate them. Luke adds that "Jesus increased in stature and 
in favor with God and man." He had before stated that he 
went down from Jerusalem to Nazareth with Joseph and Mary, 
and was subject to them. 

We have no further account of him until he was thirty years 
of age. About eighteen years of his earth-life are wholly 
unknown to us, only that he dwelt in Nazareth. At thirty we 
see him baptized by John in the river Jordan. Here we have 
an opportunity to study his nature. John's baptism was for 
men, for human beings. Jesus acknowledged his human nature 
in coming to it. But John's baptism was for sinners, and for 
that reason John refused at first to baptize Jesus. John 
demanded repentance of those whom he baptized. They con- 
fessed their sins. John refused to baptize Jesus on the ground 
that Jesus was better than himself. He said : " I have need to 
be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?" Nothing is 
clearer than that John regarded Jesus, not as a sinner, but as 
one needing no repentance, no confession of sin and no baptism. 
If John were mistaken Jesus left him in mistake. But he was 
not mistaken. Jesus was not a sinner. He had done no wicked 
act, spoken no wicked word, and entertained no wicked thought. 
He manitested no penitence. He did not repent for the reason 



THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 41 

he hid done no wrong of which to repent. He did not then, 
nor did he at any time, confess any sins. How, then, can it be 
true that he is perfectly human and not a sinner? We see all 
other men sin. We answer first, that had he sinned once, only 
once, that would have overturned his claim to the divine nature,, 
to oneness with the Father. God does not sin. God is infinite 
in goodness, and never has sinned, and never will sin. If Jesus 
had sinned once that would have proved that he was not infinite 
in goodness, and, consequently, not equal with God. It is clear 
to any one that the diviue Being will not sin, and that Jesus, 
possessed of the divine nature in its fullness and in its entirety r 
did not, and will uot, sin. But human nature is popularly said 
to be totally depraved, necessarily, naturally sinful. This is an 
error. If it were true, there could be no salvation. If it were 
true, then Christ could not, and would not have taken our 
nature upon him. If human nature is necessarily sinful, then 
whoever has that nature is naturally sinful, naturally a sinner. 
But God is the Author of our being, the Maker, the Creator of 
our nature, and if our nature is necessarily and essentially sin- 
ful, then there is no escape from the position that God himself 
is sinful. But that will not be admitted, ought not to be 
admitted, because it is not true. Then the contrary has to be 
admitted, and is true, that God created human nature sinless. 

Sin is a parasite that has fastened upon human nature, and is,. 
and has been, from the time of the fall, preying upon it, cor- 
rupting, debasing, and killing it. As the mistletoe that fastens 
upon the oak is not the oak, so sin, that fastens itself on human 
nature and saps the life out of it, is not human nature. As the 
parasitic insects that prey upon an animal body and suck the 
life blood out of it, are not that animal itself, so sin is not the 
human nature on which it preys. Before the fall man was not 
a sinner. But Adam possessed all there is in human nature 
before he sinned. But in the fall, sin with all its direful conse- 
quences, fastened upon him. But when Christ took upon him- 
self our nature in its entirety, he no more became a sinner than, 
one would become mistletoe who becomes an oak. 

Christ did take upon himself all that is essentially human, but 
that did not include sin. Adam was all that was essentially 
human before he became a sinner. Christ was, then, in his 
human nature all that Adam was before he sinned. All that 



42 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

he could, and all that he did, take upon himself, without com- 
promising the divine nature. 

Now let us examine the paradisical state of man, and thus 
learn what is essentially human nature. We can only do this to 
the extent that it is revealed to us in the Scriptures, and as it is 
exampled to us in the person of Adam and Eve. To study 
human nature, we direct attention to the first human pair in 
Eden : 1. They were not sinful, were not sinners, for Moses 
says, in immediate connection with the creation of the first 
Jiuman pair : "And God saw everything that he had made, and 
behold it was very good." Then sin, as we have been arguing, 
is not a part of their nature. Then, when Christ took upon 
himself human nature in its essentiality, he took upon him that 
which "was very good." 2. They were possessed of material 
bodies of flesh and blood. When God's Son became a man, he 
ioo took upon himself a body of flesh and blood. 3. They were 
susceptible of temptation. Th at is to say, they could be tempted. 
So could Jesus be tempted. They were tempted. So was he. 
Being tempted is not sin. Proof: "For we have not an high 
priest who can not be touched with the feeling of our infirm- 
ities : but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without 
sin." Heb. iv: 15. In the Greek of this verse there is nothing 
to correspond with the word yet. It was inserted by the king's 
translators. The Greek says that Christ "was in all points 
tempted like as we are without sin." Then temptation is not 
necessarily sinful. If so Christ sinned, for he was tempted in all 
points. But it is expressly stated that it was without sin. It 
is also stated that he was tempted like we are. Adam's sin did 
not consist in being tempted. Our sins do not consist in being 
tempted. 4. The power of choice is an essential element of 
human nature. The original human pair had the right to 
choose whether they would yield to the temptation or resist it 
and obey God. Tbey exercised the right and the ability of 
choosing. They chose to eat the forbidden fruit and ate it. 
This was disobedience ; this was sin. Christ also exercised the 
right of choice. But he chose to resist the temptation, and he 
did not sin. Adam and Eve could have chosen differently. So 
with us, we could do differently when we allow ourselves to be 
led away. The power to do wrong could not exist without the 
power to do right. 5. Man, in the first place, was capable of 



THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 43 

doing. Hence the tree of life was placed in the Garden and he 
^was allowed to eat of it and " live forever." So when Jesus 
became a man he too took upon him a body like Adam's that 
could die. 6. Man was made to obey God, made able to obey. 
Obedience to God was his normal condition and his duty even 
in Eden. So when our Lord took upon him our nature he 
accepted the obligation to obey. 

So when Jesus came to John and "John forbade him, saying, 
I have need to de baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?" 
he did not say I am a sinner, I confess my sins, I repent ; nor 
did he offer any evidence of repentance, or "bring forth fruits 
meet for repentance," but said: "Suffer it to be so now; for 
thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness." The man 
Christ Jesus was a Jew. John's baptism was, with the Jews, 
mandatory, and as Jesus was a Jew in his earth-life it was 
mandatory to him, and it was his duty to obey it, though he 
had no sins to be forgiven. He was obedient to the authority 
of God. Just as soon as he rendered obedience, the Father in 
heaven acknowledged him : " So, the heavens were opened unto 
him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and 
lighting upon him, and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, this is 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." This act of obe- 
dience on his part was an earnest of what his entire earthly 
ministry would be. In this act of simple obedience, there was 
a pledge of obedience unto death itself. 

But Jesus took upon him our nature under the unfavorable 
circumstances in which sin had involved us. We had been for 
centuries and ages debarred access to^the tree of life. Count- 
less millions of our race had already gone down, consigning 
their bodies to the dust and their souls to the unseen world. 
All then living and to come after them were going on in one 
countless army down to death. Jesus accepts and takes upon 
him our nature under these unfavorable circumstances. When 
the sentence had passed upon all the race : "Dust thou art and 
unto dust shalt thou return," he accepted the situation and 
became dust too. When Jesus came, a tender babe in Bethle- 
hem, the whole race had an inheritance of death. Jesus 
accepted our inheritance in all its parts. He took upon him 
our flesh with its appetites depraved and perverted. He 



44 THE MOBERLY PUEPIT. 

accepted our dying condition. He died our death of the body- 
in a most aggravating and excruciating form. 

He took upon him our inheritance from Adam. But did that 
inheritance include actual sin? We answer that it did not. If 
it did, then Jesus was a sinner. But that he did not sin, is the 
unequivocal statement of Scripture. Let us see whether, in the 
nature of thiDgs, sin could be a matter of inheritance. What 
is sin? "Sin is the transgression of the law." So testifies the 
inspired apostle. Sin is an act, a thing done. But can an act 
be an inheritance? It cannot. Let us illustrate. Sin, as we 
have seen, is the actual violation of law. The law of Missouri 
forbids theft, and every one who steals is a sinner against 
the State. The State has not only the right, but ought to pun- 
ish the thief, ought to punish the sinner. But can the State 
punish the children and the grandchildren and the great 
grandchildren, and all the descendants of the thief for 
a thousand generations? If they are all thieves the State 
ought to punish them. But if they be not thieves it is 
quite clear that the State can not and ought not to punish 
them. But all will agree that the child is not guilty of 
the theft that his father committed. The father's thievish 
example, the father's bad influence may lead the child to com- 
mit the crime of theft. But it is never punishable, because 
never guilty, for the crime of theft, until it has committed the 
crime by its own act. The child may and does inherit the 
bodily health and condition of the parent. He inherits the 
passions and disposition of mind of the parent. A drunkard's 
child inherits the father's appetite for strong drink. But if the 
son controls that appetite and never indulges it, he will never 
be a drunkard and will never be guilty of the sin of drunken- 
ness. While, then, the child has entailed upon it the depraved 
appetite of its father, it does not and can not directly inherit 
its father's sin, its lather's guilt, and is not held accountable for 
its father. 

In just such a way as that we stand related to Adam. He 
ate the forbidden fruit with his wife in Eden, and transgressed 
the law of God, and he and Eve in that act became sinners and 
punishable with the penalty due to sin. That penalty was 
death. Adam and Eve died because of that sin. It was a 
plain transgression of the law, and the law said: "In the day 



THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 45 

thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The law made no 
other provision for the dinner than to suffer the penalty. In 
this case the penalty is death. This is a law of universal enact- 
ment. It has never been repealed. It is in force to-day. Death 
is still the penalty of sin against God. Bat this makes it neces- 
sary to ask the questions : What is life ? What is ieath ? We 
can not exhaustively answer these questions, for the reason 
that life, like God, has to do with eternity and infinity ; and 
death, being the exact reverse of life, has also to do with eter- 
nity. But we can know something about therm We can not 
now enter into an investigation of these two terms. But we 
can have before our minds a few well settled considerations 
concerning them. Life is well known to be always associated 
with organization. Life is always found where there is union, 
where parts or members are properly associated together. 
Break down the organization, dissever the union and death 
reigns where life was. Dismember the parts of a body and it 
becomes a dead body. Sever a branch from a tree and the dis- 
severed branch is dead. Amputate a limb from the human 
body and the limb is dead. In any way break up the 
organization of any body and the whole body is dead. Death 
then is disruption, disunion, disorganization, separation. A 
man can die only in the senses in which he lives. In Eden 
Adam lived in two senses at least: 1. He enjoyed union and 
communion with God. God talked with him face to face, so to 
speak, and God said that the man was 'very good." But God 
is Spirit, and any union that any man enjoys with kim is a union 
of spirits. But such a union is spirit-life. Such a life Adam 
and Eve enjoyed in the Garden before the fall. Bat sin entered 
and corrupted the human spirit, and there was, at once, a sepa- 
ration of the human spirit from the divine Spirit. This was 
spiritual separation, spiritual disruption, spirit severed 
from Spirit. This is the length and breadth, the height 
and depth of spiritual death. This is the death described 
by Paul when to the Ephesians he says: "You hath he 
quickened who were dead in trespasses and in sins." 
This death Adam and Eve both died when they ate 
the forbidden fruit. This death every sinner dies when he 
becomes a sinner by committing "The transgression of the 
law." God and Adam were now apart; sin had separated 
d 



46 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

Adam's spirit from God's Spirit. Adam's spirit is not blotted 
out, is not annihilated, has not ceased to be. But it is separa- 
ted from God and destitute of all the honors, all the happiness 
and all the glory that was his by virtue of union with God. 
2. But Adam lived also a bodily life. But after he sinned, God 
put him out of Eden, and put a flaming sword, that turned in 
every direction, about the tree of life, for the avowed purpose 
of preventing him, now that he had become a sinner, from eat- 
ing of the tree of life and living forever. Hence his body was 
allowed to wear out by time, by toil, by accident, by disease 
and die. 

All Adam's children are born outside of Eden, and they can 
not approach to and partake of the tree of life, and of course 
must all die the death of the body. Not one single member of 
the human race partook of the forbidden tree except Adam 
and Eve. This was the original sin, so far as man is concerned. 
The first pair, only, are directly guilty of it. But by this sin 
they lost their paradisical home, and, with it, the power of 
perpetuating the life that now is. Their children then are, by 
inheriting this loss of Eden and this loss of the tree of life, 
subjected to the death of the body with all the pangs and woes 
attending it. Let us illustrate : Suppose a man possessed of a 
beautiful home, a rich estate, and plenty of money, should 
engage in gambling and riotous living, and lose all his money 
and even gamble away his house. His wife and little children 
would be turned out of doors and thus be rendered homeless. 
In such a case would the children be guilty of the sin of gamb- 
ling? Certainly not. But would theyjnot suffer the penalty of 
gambling? They would, to the extent of the loss of home and 
the pleasures that it afforded. Now, suppose that there had 
been in that home a tree of life, the fruit of which would per- 
petuate their lives forever. But when the father mortgaged 
away the home and all that appertained to it, this tree of life 
would go with the estate. In law the children are represented 
by the father. In the father they representatively sign away 
their right to home, and in such a case their life. The father, 
in such a case, sins in his own person, is guilty of serious fault. 
The children have only sinned representatively. They could 
not help it, yet it lost them home, lost them honor and lost them 
life. In this sense it is that Paul says: "Wherefore, as by one 



THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 47 

man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death 
passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." Rom. v: 12. 

When humanity was driven out of the Edenic home on 
account of sin, it was indeed houseless and homeless. Jesus, in 
taking upon him our nature, took also our misfortunes and 
our poverty. He took upon himself our homelessness. He 
said: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have 
nests ; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." 
How fully he takes upon him our destitution, our poverty. 
Though himself innocent of all fault, yet how willingly and 
how lovingly he bore our griefs. 

The first act of the Savior's public life, as we have already 
seen, was baptism. This was an obedience. Obedience to 
authority is man's first duty. When Jesus was a man on earth 
he was obedient in his childhood, and began his public ministry 
in obedience. One object of his living on earth and in the 
flesh was to afford a perfect pattern to men of what this earth 
life ought to be. To afford a perfect pattern to us he must live 
this life in our nature. Had he taken upon him any other 
nature than ours, while he might have lived a perfect life, we 
could not have seen it, and we could not have under- 
stood it and could not have followed it: "For verily he 
took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on 
him the seed of Abraham." Heb. ii : 16. Had he taken on 
him the angelic nature, the pure life and ministry that 
he could have exhibited to the angels would have been unseen 
by us, and would have afforded us no pattern. It is both our 
duty and our highest interest to follow Jesus. He has for our 
good commanded us to follow him. Had he become an angel, 
and not a man, we should not be able to follow him. But 
when " he took on him the seed of Abraham," he placed him- 
self in our reach, in our sight, and began the career, that he 
would have us imitate, in obedience. 

But as long as we are on this earth, so long will it be true, 
that we shall be tempted. By this means we shall always be 
dragged down to shame and suffering and ruin without a pat- 
tern to follow in overcoming temptation. Jesus does not stop 
at precept, but he gives example too. " He took on him the 
seed of Abraham " and became a man, and " was in all points 
tempted like as we are," overcame the temptations, and showed 



48 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

us how to act when we are tempted. He successfully resisted 
all temptations, and that in human nature too, that he might 
break Satan's yoke for us, and show us how to resist the 
tempter and overcome the temptations. If he had resisted and 
overcome in the angelic nature it would not have benefited us. 
What we needed was to have the battle fought in our own 
nature. Christ "took on him the seed of Abraham" that 
human nature, that man, in Christ, might enter into the fight 
and gain the victory over the tempter and learn how to resist 
the devil. 

The second act of the Savior's public life was to be led into 
the conflict with temptation, into conflict with the prince of 
tempters, into conflict with all the powers of temptation con- 
centrated in the old serpent, the devil himself. "Then was 
Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of 
the devil." Matt, iv : 1. "And immediately the Spirit driveth 
him into the wilderness." Mark i : 12. " And Jesus being full 
of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, and was led by the 
Spirit into the wilderness." Luke iv : 1. 

" The statement that Jesus was led up by the Spirit to be 
tempted, shows that he was subjected to temptation in accor- 
dance with a deliberate purpose, but a purpose not his own. 
Mark uses the more forcible expression : ' the Spirit driveth 
him into the wilderness.' It is an example, then, not of volun- 
tary entrance into temptation, but of being divinely led into it 
for a special divine purpose." McGarvey, Com. p. 40. 

For our sakes this battle with the tempter was a necessity. 
Yet, for our good it would not have done tor Jesus to seek this 
contest. Jesus is our exemplar and it is our business to follow 
him. But it would be very dangerous to us to seek tempta- 
tion. Hence he did not seek temptation. So we must not seek 
it. But as we are often involved in temptation and need to 
know how to extricate ourselves without sinning, our Lord and 
Master was led, was driven "into the wilderness to be tempted 
of the devil." In this measuring of swords between the prince 
of darkness and the Prince of peace, Satan musters all the 
power that he had. He never worked harder than in this case. 
His first effort was made by an appeal to the appetites of the 
flesh. Jesus "fasted forty days and forty nights." After that 
he was hungry. In his keen hunger was seen our humanity. 



THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 49 

Forty days he was without food. It appears that his hunger 
was held back for forty day3. For a time a river can be 
dammed^up and prevented from running. The waters accumu- 
late and are piled up in vast quantities. Suddenly the dam 
gives way, and millions of tons of water, in mighty flood, rush 
headlong down the stream, carrying every thing before it. So 
the natural appetite for food was somehow held in abeyance in 
the body of Jesus, while, for all that forty days, he fasted. 
Then the flood gates of appetite were thrown open and raven- 
ous hunger swept through his mortal frame. Then was the 
devil's opportunity if ever. "When Jesus was overwhelmed by 
the gnawings of terrible hunger, Satan adroitly says : " If thou 
be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." 
This was very craftily put. The superficial mind does not very 
readily see that there would have been any thing wrong in 
turning a stone into a loaf of bread. Jesus was the Son of 
God and had power to turn a stone into bread, and then he was 
so hungry. Yet it would have been wrong for him to have 
turned a stone to bread, and he would not do it. He chose to 
bear his hunger and trust his Father for something to eat. He 
was hungry just like we are hungry. But his hunger was in- 
tensified by his long fast. A fleshly appetite can never be more 
overwhelming than was the hunger of Jesus at that most criti- 
cal moment. Satan understood well the situation. If Jesus 
could only have been induced to command one little stone to 
turn into bread, the salvation of the world, the salvation of the 
whole human race, your salvation and mine, dear brethren, 
would have been defeated, would have been forever impossible. 
One misstep, one unguarded word on the part of our blessed 
Savior at that critical, at that terrible moment, would have con- 
signed you and me and all our race to the perpetual dominion 
of our worst enemy, old Satan himself. The old serpent was 
making a bolder stroke than he did in Eden. There he only 
contested with human power and human nature, though that 
human nature in the Garden was most favorably situated. But 
now he enters the lists with human nature, worn down by long 
fasting, and now terribly pinched by the gnawings of present 
hunger. But the divine has entered into the human in Jesus, 
and a victory over him will be a victory over God. This is 
Satan's ambition, to break the power of the Almighty. 



50 THE MOBEEXY PULPIT. 

Jesus was, and is, the last hope for man. Satan sees 
that if he can, in any way, induce him to take the least false 
step, then the human race will be his forever. He knows that if 
he ever succeeds by an appeal to human appetite he must do so 
now. He knows that if he fails now, he will forever fail by 
that kind of temptation. He knows that if he fails at that point 
and at this time, that forever after, every man who puts his trust 
in Jesus and calls on him, will be enabled to overcome all temp- 
tations that come through human passions. 

Knowing this, how cunningly he says: "If thou be the Son 
of God command that these stones be made bread." But with 
all the sublimity of quiet, modest majesty, Jesus says: "It is 
written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word 
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." At the utterance 
of these words Satan knew that he was foiled. He knew that 
his dominion over man through the instrumentality of his 
appetites was forever lost. He knew that when the hosts of 
Israel were starving in the wilderness, as they supposed, that 
God had taught them that they could be fed without the bread 
of earth, that by the fiat of his word he sent bread, manna, from 
above and fed them. He knew that Israel was typical of Christ, 
and now, he saw that Christ, though the hunger of hundreds 
of thousands of Israel in the wilderness was concentrated in 
him, was looking to his Father for sustenance. He saw that 
Jesus would not show any mistrust of his Father by turning 
stones into bread to satisfy present hunger. In that way the 
devil made no further attempt. He gave it up. Jesus was tri- 
umphant. In him, dear brethren, we are able to successfully 
resist all temptations. Let us continue faithful to him. He will 
be with us in six troubles, and in the seventh he will not forsake 
us. He will take us to heaven in the end and give us crowns 
of glory there. 

"While the brethren sing: 

"Now is the accepted time," 
we invite those who have never confessed him to come and 
obey him, and make him their Brother too. 



SERMON IV, 

THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST, 

CONCLUDED. 

Preached Lord's Day, April 18, 1880. 



Text—" But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the 
form of a servant." Phil, ii : 7. 

My Dear Brethren and Sisters : 

Your attention is asked, this morning, to the continuation of 
the study of the human nature of our Lord Jesus Christ. At 
the close of the preceding discourse we left him in the wilder- 
ness with the tempter. He had just come out triumphant over 
the devil in his assault upon him through the appetites and pas- 
sions. Jesus, borne down by the weakness and the terrible 
hunger following forty days fasting, came out of the contest 
unscathed. Satan was defeated and knew it. He did not try 
to succeed by appealing to another one of the appetites per- 
taining to human flesh. But there is more of a man than the 
flesh. Jesus haviug taken upon him our whole nature was 
liable of course to be tempted in every way that we are. It was 
necessary for us, that he be tempted in every possible way that 
we can, so that he might show us how to overcome in every 
possible case, and that he might break the tempter's power for 
tempting in every particular. So the tempter next appeals to 
what the apostle John calls " the lust of the eyes." To do this 
he places Jesus " on a pinnacle of the temple." He then pro- 
poses to Jesus to cast himself down from the giddy height. 
This temptation is most ingeniously presented. He seeks to 
induce Jesus to do an act that he ought not to do. Yet, the 
wrong, in the act, i3 so adroitlv concealed that many a man 

51 



•52 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

would not have seen it at all. " If thou be the Son of God east 
thyself down." Jesus claimed to be the Son of God ; was the 
son of God ; and the Jews, and indeed all men, needed to be con- 
vinced of his Sonship. To cast himself from that lofty height, 
down upon the rocks below, and receive no injury, would afford 
the Jews an ocular demonstration of his power, and would 
surely attract great attention to him, and would make him at 
once famous in Jerusalem. 

The only reason on the surface for not doing the act was the 
danger of bodily injury. But the act is only urged on the 
ground that he was the Son of God. And if the Son of God, 
as in the case of turning stones into bread, he had the power to 
allow himself to fall and yet not be bodily injured. Here was 
a chance to make a grand display and to win the glory of man, 
and perhaps do some good in convincing men of his Sonship. 
Still, if the human nature in him shrank from the fall, the 
tempter, to meet that, quotes the Scriptures: " For it is written, 
he shall give his angels charge concerning thee ; and in their 
hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy 
foot against a stone." Satan's argument is, that if Jesus be the 
Son of God and the Scripture quoted true, both of which 
Jesus approved, there would be no danger in making the leap. 
Further, if Jesus declined to do it, his refusal would show a 
lack of confidence, either in his Sonship or in the Scriptures, 
or in both. But how completely Jesus puts him again to the 
rout in one terse quotation from the Scriptures: "Thou shalt 
not tempt the Lord thy God." Though God had promised to 
protect him, it would have been wrong, even for Jesus to have 
wantonly and unnecessarily exposed himself to danger, for that 
would have been putting God to the proof. Had he leaped 
from " the pinnacle of the temple," and thus have gone unneces- 
sarily into danger, it would have been putting God to the 
proof (the only sense in which God can be tempted), for God 
would have been obliged to interfere to protect his Son, or 
else allow an apparent failure in his promise. This his beloved 
Son would not do, and he silenced and foiled ihe tempter by 
saying: "It is written again, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy 
God." 

There is a good lesson for us, brethren, at this point. Jesus 
is able to assist us in temptation. He has promised to be with 



THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. \ 53 

118 in troublous times. But we must not tempt him, we dare 
not put him to the proof by going recklessly and foolishly into 
danger. The professed follower of Christ tempts God, puts 
him to the proof, when he signs a saloon man's petition for a 
license and then expects God to shield his sons from the dan- 
gers of strong drink. When a church member signs such a 
petition or casts his vote in favor of the whisky business, he 
signs away his right, votes away his right to God's protection 
for his family and himself against all the evils, and shames, and 
disgraces, and tears, and woes, and blood that follow in the 
path of the wine cup. After signing such a petition, or casting 
such a vote, it is tempting God, it is putting God to the proof, 
to ask him or expect him, after that, to protect the signer or 
the voter and those dependent upon him from the drunkards 
woes. The principle is the same when we needlessly go into 
bad company, or allow our children to associate with the vile. 
It is always wrong to go recklessly and needlessly into any dan- 
ger. It is not bravery to go foolishly into peril where there is 
no good to come of it. That is the place where God will not 
protect. But to stand for the right, though there be danger, 
and trust in God is heroic. 

The devil, deleated a second time, makes his final appeal to 
the love of power in the human heart. He takes Jesus to a 
mountain's top and shows him all the kingdoms of the world. 
He shows him the glory of all these kingdoms also. We may 
not know how these things were done by the devil, but the fact 
that he did them is so positively and clearly stated that we must 
accept the facts. The devil, in offering to give all the kingdoms 
and all their glory to Jesus, made the highest appeal to the self- 
ishness of the human heart. He made a most daring appeal. 
He evidently thought that the human heart in Christ must yield 
to the offer of all the kingdoms of earth with all their glory. 
He appealed to the love of power, to the love of fame, and to 
the love of money in the human heart. He offered all earthly 
authority and dominion ; he offered all there was on earth to 
gratify ambition ; he offered all there was on earth to gratify the 
love of money in the human soul. All that he asked in return 
was one, only one, act of worship for himself: " All these things 
will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." All 
the power, all the honor, and all the money are offered in 



54 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

exchange for one act of worship to be bestowed upon Satan. 
The tempter does not this time say : " If thou be the Son of 
God," nor does he quote Scripture this time. But, relying on 
the magnitude ot the offer, and upon the weakness of the heart 
of man, he boldly asks Jesus to " fall down and worship " the 
devil himself. But Jesus says: "Get thee hence, Satan : for it 
is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only 
shalt thou serve." 

This ended the conflict in the wilderness. " Then the devil 
leaveth him." No better answer could have been given. There 
is but one object of worship in the universe, that is one proper 
object of worship, and that is God. Idolatry has always been 
a prominent sin in the humau race. Jesus strikes idolatry, and 
the devil too, a deadly blow in his reply. After this, every man 
who puts his trust in the Christ will be able to overcome all 
temptations presented to the soul through the love of the world. 
The tempter has now tried all the avenues to the human heart, 
and has been defeated at every point. Jesus has been the vic- 
tor at every point. The old enemy has beeu hurled back at 
every point. The victory is ours too, for our Lord overcame in 
our nature. The human in Christ rose above the tempter's 
power. He is in sympathy with his brethren and able to help 
them in the hour of temptation. " In that he himself hath suf- 
fered, being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." 

We see the human in him again, after the close of the con- 
flict. " Then the devil leaveth him, and behold angels came and 
ministered unto him." Jesus was now starving bodily though 
victorious over all temptation. The cravings of hunger were 
as terrible, and as depressing to him as they would be to us 
under circumstances as trying. But, trusting in his Father and 
our Father, he remained faithful and resisted all temptation. 
But now, that the struggle with Satan is over, he must in his 
human nature be perishing. But as had been done by angels 
before, when the prophet of the Lord was starving, so now 
"angels came and ministered unto him." 

We have now seen that although Jesus was as divine as his 
Father, yet so far as the capability of being tempted and the 
fact of being tempted were concerned, he was as human as we 
are. But we have also seen that he passed through all tempta- 
tion without sin, and that he is both able and willing to help us- 



THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 55 

to overcome in all our temptations. But we now proceed to 
show that he wa9 not only tempted, but that he felt and suffered 
all our sorrow. We can conceive of God as loving, and kind, 
and merciful. But we do not think of him as sorrowful, and 
heart broken, and weeping. God only manifests these quali- 
ties in his Son. These qualities of agony, sorrow, loneliness, 
homelessness, pain, hunger, thirst, weariness, distress, weepings, 
and such like are human and belong to man on the earth and in 
the flesh. But we see Jesus manifesting all these: "For we 
have not an high priest which can not be touched with the feel- 
ing of our infirmities." This Scripture in the Greek says : For 
we have not a high priest who is not able to feel our infirmities. 
Christ has so fully entered into our human nature that he feels 
our infirmities. The Greek word rendered iDfirmity applies 
both to the physical and moral natures. Jesus felt both our 
bodily paius and our heart pangs. He wept over Jerusalem. 
He shed bitter tears of sorrow over the city when he foretold 
its destruction. In sorrow and in tears he predicted the comings 
of the enemy, the utter leveling of the city with the ground, so 
that not one stone would be left upon another. He shed tears 
of sympathy and of grief with Mary and Martha at the grave 
of Lazarus. These tears came from the human side of bis 
nature. There are no tears in heaven. But until the great 
judgment day there will be tears on earth, and man will con- 
tinue, until then, to need a high priest who can feel our 
sorrows. 

But the Scripture now uuder consideration teaches that 
Jesus feels our pangs and sorrows now. It is not only true 
that he sympathized with human weakness and human sorrow 
while on earth, but he sympathizes with us now, to-day. W hat 
is the language ? " We have not an high priest who can not be 
touched with the feeling of our infirmities." This is all in the 
present tense, was present when this was written. But when 
this was written Jesus was already in heaven, and was able to 
be touched with the feeling of the infirmities of his disciples, 
though he was in heaven and they on the earth. The philosophy 
of this fact we need not trouble ourselves about, but the con- 
soling fact we lay hold of by faith. When the devil presses us 
hard with temptations and our souls wrestle with the tempter 
Jesus in heaven feels our weakness and is glad to help us to 



56 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

overcome. When our poor souls are cast down with sorrow, 
Jesus in the Father's house is touched with our sorrow. When 
dangers encompass us about, and our hearts are faiDt with fear, 
Jesus, with the sceptre of heaven and earth in his hands, feels 
our depression of spirit. When poverty pinches, when we are 
homeless, when hunger gnaws at our vitals, when the chilly, 
wintry blast pierces our very bones, Jesus, with the jeweled 
crown of the universe on his brow, feels our sadness, remem- 
bering that while on earth he, too, was poor, and homeless, and 
hungry and cold. When the chill of death steals upon us, 
when the death dew stands in drops upon our foreheads, when 
the death blindness begins to veil our eyes in darkness, when 
the death bell's ringiDg in our ears shuts out the din of this 
world and the voices of loved ones, then Jesus, the King ot 
kings, feels our death throes and sends his good angels to bear 
our souls away to Abraham's bosom. 

Jesus did not forget his earthly friends when he went to 
heaven. He did not leave his human sympathy behind when 
he went up on high. He did not lay aside our human nature 
when he was coronated King. He is still in the tenderest 
sympathy with human suffering and human woe. He is our 
brother, but he loves us with vastly more than even a brother's 
love. 

But now we turn our attention to his humiliation and death. 
In human nature he was not only tempted, and hungered and 
thirsted, and ate food, and drank water, and labored, and 
wearied, and slept, and sorrowed, and wept as we do, but he 
also died and was buried in the grave as we must die and go 
down to the tomb. In his death he was humiliated and 
degraded. He " made himself of no reputation, and took upon 
him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of 
men, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himseli 
and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." 
Phil, i? : 7, 8. 

We will devote the remainder of our time this morning to 
this Scripture, taking its items in numerical order: 

1. "Made himself of no reputation." This is badly rendered 
in King James. "Made * * of no reputation" is all made of 
one little word used by the apostle in the Greek. It is ekenose, 
third person singular, first aorist tense of kenco. The word is 



THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 57 

defined: "To empty, evacuate; to divest one's self of one's 
prerogatives ; abase one's self." It means here that, while 
Jesus was "equal with God " and " thought it not robbery to 
be equal with God," still, for man's sake, he divested himself of 
the glory and honor that had been his from all eternity. He 
possessed the divine glory before the world was, but laid it all 
aside to become a man. He emptied himself, stripped himself, 
for thirty-three and a half years, of " the form of God," of the 
divine majesty, of the divine glory, that he might become one 
of us. He did not cease to be God, but he put off the " form oi 
God " when he " took upon him the form of a servant." He 
did not cease to be divine, but he laid aside the glory of God. 
He laid it aside so effectually that he had to regain it by faith- 
fully and perfectly doing the will of his Father while in human 
flesh on this earth. "While in our nature on earth he prayed, 
just as men ought to pray, for the same glory that he had with 
the Father before the world was. He laid aside the authority 
and dominion and dignity that pertained to the divine nature. 
Yet he did not lay aside the divine nature itself. But he 
stripped it of its glory in his person that he might put on, and 
did put on our humiliation, our temptations, our disappoint- 
ments and our mortality. So in his person the divine, divested 
of its sublime majesty and beauty, was linked to the human and 
clothed with our marred visage and uncomely mien. He laid 
aside the royal robes of the " Father's house " and put on the 
" sackcloth and ashes " of earth, cursed with sin and death. 
The prophet described him correctly long before he took upon 
him our nature. He says : " Who hath believed our report ? 
And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed ? For he shall 
grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry 
ground ; he hath no form nor comeliness ; and when we shall see 
him there is no beauty that we should desire him." Isa. liii : 1, 2. 
Isaiah here very accurately described, in prophetic style, the 
same aspect of the Savior's character and person that Paul 
describes in our text when, in historic style, he says, "But 
made himself of no reputation," — emptied himself of heavenly 
majesty and glory ; divested himself of his heavenly preroga- 
tives. 

2. "And took upon him the form of a servant and was made 
in the likeness of men." But that we mav the better under- 



58 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

stand the apostle's thought, we re-translate the whole seventh 
verse: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, 
being in the likeness of men. The two participial phrases, 
taking the form of a servant, and, being in the likeness of men, 
express simultaneous facts. He took the form of a servant at 
the same time that he assumed the likeness of men. Indeed, 
the latter phrase may properly be considered as explanatory of 
the former. He took upon him the form of a servant by assum- 
ing the likeness of men. The whole verse may be paraphrased 
thus : But he stripped himself of the divine glory by taking 
upon him the condition of a servant ; and he took upon him 
the condition of a servant by becoming the Son of man. 

The condition of a servant, in the nature of things, implies 
an obligation to obey. The normal condition of a servant is 
obedience to authority, submission to the will of another. 
Hence we shall see directly that the whole earth life of Jesus 
was one continued obedience to the will of his Father. But 
Paul's effort, evidently, is to find words to suitably express the 
humiliation of Christ. The condition of a servant goes still 
further — it is expressive of inferiority. Jesus not only obeyed 
the law of Moses, and did the will of the Father, and even paid 
tribute to Caesar, but he spent his entire earthly ministry in 
toils and labors, in self-denials and sufferings for the good of 
others, and that without pay. He received no wages. He said 
to his disciples: "I am among you as he that serveth." He 
was willing to serre his disciples for their good. He washed 
his disciples' ieet. He volunteered to do this service, even this 
menial service, to teach them a very important lesson. He was 
ever ready to do good to others without reference to self 
reward, but that somebody might be better, might be happier. 
He was willing to be a servant of all, that he might save all. 
Still, he does not serve us contrary to our wills. But he will 
serve and save all who are willing and glad to be served by one 
so transcend ently loving and kind. If Peter, even, had not 
become willing, yea, more than willing, that Jesus should wash 
his feet, he, even he, would have had no part with Jesus. Peter, 
as soon as he learned that fact, became not only willing, but 
anxious, to be served by the Lord Jesus. But, oh ! how few 
there are now willing to have their souls washed from the 
pollutions of sin. He is as ready to-day to cleanse the willing 



THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 59 

soul from the foulness of sin as he was then to wash Peter's 
feet. Still he will not, and ought not, to wash any man's soul 
contrary to the man's will. If a man love sin more than he 
loves Christ, he is not worthy of him. Christ served humanity 
willingly, gladly, and men and women and little children ought 
to be glad of the opportunity to do him any service. 

3. "And being found in tashion as a man, he humbled him- 
self" He not only humbled himself in laying aside trie majesty 
of heaven, and divesting himself of his original glory in 
becoming a man, but as a man, he humbled himself among 
men. By the fleshly line he was heir to the throne of Israel. 
He was of the stock of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah, of the 
house of David, of the royal line. He was heir not only to the 
throne of Judea, but being David's heir, he was heir to the 
crown and heir to the throne of the twelve tribes of Israel. 
The Jews expected one to come, desired one to come, who 
would re-establish the throne of David. Their proudest 
ambition would have been to be able to see the military 
prowess of the times of David, and the glory of Jerusalem in 
the days of Solomon re-established. Their hearts would have 
thrilled with loyalty to one of the line of David, at whose 
voice the stormy winds were hushed and the rolling billows 
were calm, and at whose touch disease fled away and the ruddy 
glow of health returned to the pale cheek, and at whose word 
of command warm life came back to the cold, dead body. 
Their grandest and loftiest aspirations would have been to 
march and fight under the banner of David's heir, and heir of 
Solomon, wiser than Solomon himself, who could have re- 
enacted the pageantry of King Hiram's cedars of Lebanon 
coming to Jerusalem, and the Queen of the South paying court 
at Jerusalem to the wisdom of a king far outstripping the 
renowned wisdom of Solomon. All this the man Christ Jesus 
had the power to have done. No other man has lived, possessed 
of such power, and no other man has lived possessed of such 
goodness and humility that he would, or could, have refrained 
from exercising it in that way. Such a career would have 
aggrandized the Jews for a season, and have left the whole 
human race under the grinding heel of Satanic tyranny for all 
eternity to come. 

But instead of pursuing such a course of human glory, Christ 



60 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

Jesus, as a man, "humbled himself" among men. He was 
content with poverty and hardship. He acknowledged Beth- 
lehem as the place of his nativity and Nazareth as his place of 
residence. His best beloved ones were humble fishermen. He 
was content with greater poverty than that of the wild beasts 
and the wild birds. Why all this poverty? Why this hunger- 
ing and thirsting ? Why these sore temptations ? Why these 
sorrowful tears ? Why this weariness of the flesh ? Not that 
he might accomplish any thing for himself, but that he might 
win our souls away from the love of sin ; that he might break 
Satan's oppressive yoke : that he might make an atoning sacri- 
fice for our sins ; that he might purify our hearts ; that he 
might make us " partakers of the divine nature ; " that he 
might constitute us heirs of God and joint heirs with himself 
of all things; that he might "burst the bars of death;" that 
he might rescue us from mortality ; that he might even " quicken 
your mortal bodies" and mine ; that he might open to men the 
pearly gates of the golden city and bid them come in and dwell. 
These, dear brethren, are some of the reasons why Jesus 
humbled himself. He stooped to the lowliest condition of the 
poorest of the race of man that the humblest and poorest of 
our fallen race might lay hold on him, and be lifted up by him. 
4. "And became obedient unto death, even the death of the 
cross." Our Savior came to this world to render a perfect 
obedience to the will of the Father. Obedience is, and always 
has been, necessary to the well-being of the human race. It is 
and has been also necessary to the well-being of the angelic 
race — if it be proper to call angels a race. Obedience to God, 
their Creator, is necessary to their well-being, whether they 
should be called a race or not. We are seriously affected for 
evil by angelic disobedience. We are affected for good by 
angelic obedience. The good angels do us good, and the bad 
angels do us harm. The human race needed one to render 
perfect obedience as a man, as one of us ; an obedience that 
would be human, and at the same time perfect and complete. 
Such an obedience man had failed to render under the favorable 
circumstances of Eden. Such an obedience was an impossi- 
bility under the unfavorable conditions of man already fallen, 
already sinful, already mortal, already condemned. Such 
obedience the purest of all the angels could not render, for the 



THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 61 

reason that his obedi<nce would, of necessity, be angelic and 
not human. There is but one, never has been but one, and 
never will be but one, who can, or could, render that perfect 
human obedience to the perfect law of God that is ( ssential to 
human well-being. That one is Jesus Christ, our Lord. He 
came to this world and took our nature upon him for the 
express purpose of rendering such obedience to the law of God, 
and of doing it in such a way that we may reap the benefits of 
it. " Then said I, lo. I come (in the volume of the book it is 
written of me,) to do thy will, O God. Above, when he said, 
Sacrifice, and offering, and burnt offt rings, and oflering for sin r 
thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein, which are 
offered by the law ; said he, Lo, I come to do thy will ( O God) : 
he takeih away the first, that he may establish the second." 
Heb. x : 7-9. 

This grand utterance, quoted by the apostle, teaches that 
Jesus came expressly to render obedience to the will of the 
Father. It teaches beyond all question that the offerings made 
under the Mosaic law w< re not sufficient to meet ihe wants of 
man. They did not and could not satisfy the demands of the 
perfect law. They were themselves imperfect. They could 
not take away sin. They, and the law under which they were 
offered, must give place to something better. An obedience 
and a sacrifice that were absolutely perfect were necessary to 
redeem man from the thralldom of t>in and death. This Scrip- 
ture explicitly teaches that Jesus came to render that perfect 
obedience and offer that perfect sacrifice. All the value that 
attached to offerings under the law was in their typical char- 
acter. They pointed forward to Christ. They were the means 
by which the Israel of God reached to Christ. But when 
Christ came and made the offering, and rendered the obedience 
that was perfect, he "took away the first," that is, the cere- 
monial law, with its offerings, that he might "establish the: 
second." 

During Christ's earth life he was always obedient. He obeyed 
Joseph and Mary in his childhood. He obeyed the law of Moses 
in his manhood. He obeyed in all things the will of his Father. 
He flinched not at temptation, rejected not poverty. He 
endured hardship. He underwent sorrow, and when obedience 
demanded his life, it was not withheld, but most obediently 
e 



62 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

offered up, most lovingly surrendered in order to secure eternal 
life for others. He was " obedient uuto death, even the death 
of the cross." 

Death is cold, and hard, and bitter at best, but when it comes 
with shame and disgrace it is doubly severe. But when the 
shame is undeserved, when the disgrace comes of false accusa- 
tion and lying witnesses, death is terrible beyond the power of 
words to describe. Such, brethren, was the death of the cross. 
Jesus was hated by wicked and corrupt men because his God- 
like life, his pure life, his perfect life, was a living rebuke to 
their sins. They hated him because of his righteous rebukings 
of their hypocrisy. This hatred was intensified by their reli- 
gious bigotry. They mistook his real fulfilling of the law, 
his accomplishing the end for which the law was given, for 
the subversion of the law. They, having made void the word 
o( God by their traditions, did not recognize him as the prophet 
of whom Moses himself spoke when he said : "A prophet 
shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, 
like unto me ; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he 
shall say unto you." Hence they had in their hearts the hatred 
of hypocrisy exposed, of sins laid bare and religious bigotry 
combined. Then, to add to the bitterness of death, k came 
-through the treachery of a friend, a hypocritical friend it is 
frue, but a friend, up to that time, true and loved. Then the 
cross itself was disgraceful. Then to disgrace him more deeply 
still, they put him to death in the company of thieves. He 
submitted to a cruel death on the shameful cross in obedience. 
Hear him in Geihst- inane: "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, 
even unto death." " O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup 
pass from me: nevertheless not as I w'll, but as thou wilt." 
"O my Father, if this may not pass away from me except I 
<3rink it, thy will be done." Then obedience to the will of his 
Father, obedience that involved " even the death of the cross," 
closed the life of Jesus. 

Remember, brethren, that the false accusations of the lying 
witnesses were as repugnant to him as they would be to you. 
Remember that the tr< aehery of Judas stung his heart as 
keenly as it would yours. Remember that the shame of the 
cross was as repulsive to him as it would be to you. Remember 
that the company of thieves was as loathsome to him as to you. 



THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 63 

Remember that his flesh felt the sharp thorns and the cold, 
-cruel nails as painfully as you would feel them. Then remem- 
ber that he endured all this in our nature to save us. Remember 
that he loved all men well enough to suffer all this for their 
sakes. Then, finally, remember that he would have all men 
follow him, obey him as he obeyed his Father. Let us ever be 
faithful to him, dear brethren. 

Now we ask our friends who are here to-day, and who have 
never confessed him before men, whether there is a responsive 
cord in their hearts to the love that he bore to them on the 
cross? Do you not intend to obey him? Do you not know 
that if death finds you in disobedience to him that you will be 
forever lost? Why not confess him to-day? While the brethren 
sing, 

"Almost persuaded now to believe," 
we ask you to " come to Jesus." 



<i 






SERMON IV, 
CHRIST THE MEDIATOR, 

Preached Lord's Day, May 2, 1880. 



Text — "For tnere is one God and one Mediator between God and 
men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all, to be 
testified in due time."— Paul. 
My Dear Brethren and Sisters : 

Our theme this morning is, Christ in the office of Mediator. 
Webster defines the word mediator to mean : " One who 
mediates; especially, one who interposes between parties at 
variance for the purpose of reconciling them; intercessor; 
hence, by way of eminence, Christ is called the Mediator." 
Webster goes on and gives as synonyms of mediator: "Inter- 
cessor; advocate; propitiator ; interceder ; arbitrator; umpire." 

These definitions show clearly that wherever there is a medi- 
ator officiating, there are two parties at variance. These two 
parties may consist of one or any number of persons each. 
The office of a mediator is to reconcile the parties. Reconcili- 
ation is inseparable from the office of a mediator. Variance is 
always the result of a fault, or faults of one or the other, or 
both of the parties. In this case the parties at variance are 
God and man. The fault is all on the part of man. He is the 
offending party. God is the offended party. To effect a recon- 
ciliation in this case, so far as God is concerned, it is only 
necessary to remove the offense on man's part. The offense is 
sin. Man's sins have separated him from God. There is no 
change in God necessary. Man is the party to be changed. 
He needs to be made "a new creature." Christ, as mediator, 
did, and does, the work of reconciliation. The work of recon- 
ciliation does not exhaust Christ's mission. He is more than 
64 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 65 

Mediator. He fills more offices than one. But the one we have 
under consideration to-day, is the one specially devoted to the 
work of bringing about the state of amity between men and 
God. 

The word mediator occurs seven times in the English New 
Testament, though the Greek word whence it comes occurs 
only six times in the Greek New Testament. This comes of 
the fact that King James' translators supply it once where the 
word does not occur in the Greek. This is in the twentieth 
verse, third chapter of Galatians. In that verse, in the English, 
it occurs twice, while in the Greek it occurs but once. 

The word, in Greek, is mesitees. It is found first in Gal. iii : 
19, 20. ""Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added 
because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom 
the promise was made ; and it was ordained by angels in the 
hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, 
but God is one." Now, let us consider the circumstances under 
which this was said. Paul was refutiug the position of the 
Ju^aizing teachers, who contended that it was necessary for 
Christians to keep the law of Moses. Those teachers insisted 
on imposing the ceremonies of the law on the Gentile Chris- 
tians. To refute them, Paul appealed to the Old Testament 
history of the Messianic promises. He reminded them that "to 
Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, 
and to seeds, as of many, but as of one. And to thy seed, 
which is Christ." This is the language of the sixteenth verse, 
preceding the ones under consideration. Before Abraham left 
his native land, God had said to him: "In thee shall all the 
families of the earth be blessed." This promise, recorded in 
Gen. xii : 3, related to Christ. Paul so applies it in this verse. 
Then the promise of the blessings of the gospel in Christ are 
not dependent on the law : are, indeed, independent of the law. 
God covenanted with Abraham and his seed long before the 
law. The promise was four hundred and thirty year3 older 
than the law. Hear Paul in the next verse : 'And this I say, 
that the covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ, 
the law which was four hundred and thirty years after, can not 
disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect." The 
law, then, was four hundred and thirty years too youug to have 
the blessings of salvation in it. Then it was too narrow. None 



66 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. . 

but the Jews were heirs by the law, while the Abrahamic 
promise included all nations. Christ was to offer salvation to 
all that would accept it, whether Jews or (Gentiles. The Juda- 
izing teacher felt this narrowness of the law, and hence he 
wished to circumcise the Gentile Christians, and thus make 
legal Jews of them. But there were two serious objections to 
this : 1. It would do no good ; as Paul shows, by the fact that 
the Messianic blessings were matters of promise, and not of 
law. They were to be received and enjoyed by faith in the 
promised seed, which seed was Christ. But this promise ante- 
dated the law four hundred and thirty years, and all the bless- 
ings of Christ's gospel could be had by laith, on the part of 
any man not under the law as readily as by a man who was 
under the law. Then, to circumcise a Gentile Christian added 
no gospel blessings to him ; he gained nothing by it. 2. The 
law was burdensome. It involved expense, and labor, and time 
to observe its ritual. Hence, the apostles declined to Jay any 
such burden on the Gentile brethren. Paul states further, in 
the next verse: "If the inheritance be of the law, it is no 
more of promise ; but God gave it to Abraham by promise." 
The Messianic inheritance can not be both by the law and by 
the promise at the same time. But as a matter of simple fact 
God gave it to Abraham by promise, and the Judaizing teacher 
is logically under obligation to close his mouth. 

This brings us to our passage where a mediator is officially 
brought to view. Let us re-translate it from the original : 

Wherefore then the law? On account of transgressions it 
was added, ordained by angels, in the hand of a mediator, until 
the seed should come, to whom the promise pertained. But the 
mediator is not of one, but God is one. 

The Mosaic dispensation, in this passage called the law, was 
established and kept in force until Christ came in fulfillment of 
the Messianic promise. That was its use and limit. It was at an 
end when Christ made the offering for sin. It was only estab- 
lished until the seed, Christ, should come. Then it was to give 
place to something better. 

The Mosaic Institution and the Christian are distinct from 
one another. They are based upon different promises. They 
Were ordained to confer different blessings. They had differ- 
ent mediators, different rules and different governments. Mo- 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 67 

srs was the mediator of one, and Jesus was the mediator of the 
other. The twelve tribes of Israel were the recipients of the 
honors of the one, while all, of every nation who believe in 
Christ, are the recipients of the honors of the other. One per- 
tained to time and to things earthly, while the other pertains 
to eternity and to things heavenly, to things divine. 

God made two promises to Abraham. One was that his seed 
in the flesh should possess the land of Canaan and become a 
strong nation in it. The other was that all nations should be 
blessed in his seed. Gen. xii : 1, 2, 3; xxii: 17, 18. Neither ot 
these promises was fulfilled in the lifetime of Abraham. But 
the former was verified four hundred and thirty years after, in 
the establishment of the Mosaic Institution with Moses as medi- 
ator ; and the latter h!is been, and is now being verified in the 
Institution of Christ. One is called the law, the other the gos- 
pel. These two stand related to each other as type and antitype, 
Moses, as the mediator of the one, is type of Christ, as media- 
tor of the other. Christ is antitype to Moses. Israel in Egypt 
was estranged from God. They had become, in their bondage, 
idolatrous and alienated from God. They needed one to stand 
between them and God, one to wiu their hearts to him by wean- 
ing them away from the flesh-pots of Egypt. They needed one 
to lead them out of Egypt, make them free, and present them 
acceptable to God. The long history of the dealings of Moses 
with them is proof of this. 

Paul says: "The mediator is not of one." He is of two. "God 
is one," and man is one. But God and men are two. Christ as 
mediator stands between God and man. A mediator, to suc- 
ceed in reconciling, must have the confidence and the good 
will of both parties, must have the love of both parties. Hence, 
Moses in Egypt had to win the confidence of Israel by giving 
sufficient proof of his mission. Likewise Christ, on earth, gave 
most indubitable proofs of his divine power and his love for the 
fallen sons of men. As the law was ordained in the hand of 
a mediator until the Christ should come, bo Christ's mediator- 
ship will continue, at least, until the coming of the Lord at the 
great day of the resurrection and of the judgment. 

Let us now carefully examine the language of our text: 
" For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, 
the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all, to be 



68 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

testified in due time." Our text is introduced by the word for, 
connecting the text with what the apostle has just previously 
said. Paul is forcibly urging the duty of prayer, instructing 
Timothy to exhort the brethren, and himself exhorting the 
brethren " that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, 
and giving of thanks he made for all men " He adds, on behalf 
of kings, and on behalf of all that are in authority, "that we 
may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and 
honesty." He then goes on to give reasons for exhorting the 
brethren thus to pray. One of which is that, "this is good and 
acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who will have all 
men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth." 
It is always a good reason for doing a thing when we know 
that " it is good and acceptable in the srght of God." And if 
God wills that all men should be saved and come to the knowl- 
edge of the truth, it is certainly right for us to pray for all 
men. This brings us to the language of our text. There are 
five things in this text to be considered. We take them up 
and discuss them in numerical order. They are as follows : 

1. "For there is one God." The proposition that "there is 
one God," is here given as a further reason why we ought to 
pray for all men. The polytheistic nations, of course, if they 
prayed at all, would not, and could not, pray for all men. A 
man who believed in the god of war, would not pray for his 
enemies. A man who believed in the gods of Rome would not 
pray for the Carthagenians. In the very nature of things, a 
polytheist could not pray for all men. For the gods them- 
selves of one nation were regarded as the enemies of another 
nation. Whether there was one God or many gods, had been 
the issue between Mosaism and polytheism. It had required a 
constant struggle, with many failures, to k^ep, even the Jews 
themselves, on the monotheistic side of the boundary line 
between Mosa T sm and polytheistic religions. But, after the 
Babylonian captivity, the Jews were consistent and persistent 
monotheists. They were soundly converted to the faith of one 
God after the nation's sore experience in Babylon Whatever 
else may be alleged against them, it must be said of them that 
they were sound monotheists after their return from the cap- 
tivity. 

But while the Jews had beom3 settled in the b.4ief of one 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 69 

Go 3, and but one, yet there was a lesson that they had not yet 
learned. While they believed in the God of Israel as the one 
only true God, they did not believe that he was the God of all 
men. All other men they regarded as simply godless. It took 
Christ to teach the further lesson that the one true God is the 
God of all men. But Christians, for whose instruction Paul 
was writing, were presumed to have learned that, as God had 
made all men, so, also, he loved all men, desired the happiness 
of all men, had given his Son to die for all men, that all men 
who would accept of him might be saved. Then the fact that 
there is one God, who loves all, constitutes a good reason for 
our praying for all. If we be God's children, we ought to be 
like our Father. He manifested his love for all, and we ought 
to manifest our love for all. One method of showing our love 
for all men and doing all men good would be to pray for them. 

2. There is "one Mediator between God and men." This 
affords another good reason for praying for all men, but it does 
much more than that. It gives us a good insight to the correct 
understanding of Christ's mediatorship There is the fact that 
there is one Mediator, not two, not many, but only one. He 
mediates between God and men, not some men, not a part of 
men, not the Jew nor the Gentile, as such ; not the rich, nor the 
poor, not the king nor the peasant —but he is one Mediator 
between God and men, all men, all whom the word men repre- 
sents. 

There being only one Mediator, the papal habit of praying 
to the saints to intercede for the suppliant is idolatrous. There 
is only one Mediator, but to call on the saints to intercede at 
the throne above is to make many mediators. To pray to the 
angels is to do the same thing. To pray to the Virgin Mary is 
to set aside the one " mediator between God and men." It is 
idolatry. It is, to worship the creature instead of the Creator. 
It is false worship, for there is but one Mediator. 

All prayer to God must be offered in the name of Christ. 
None but he, has a right to make intercession at the court of 
heaven. He is the "mediator between God and men" in order 
that by him any man, who will, may have access to a throne of 
mercy. As we can not approach God in our own name, we 
need a mediator of all men, so that every man who will may 
be able to come to God. 



70 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

The Mohammedan has no right to be heard, though he pray 
ever so often, for he rejects Christ, the one Mediator. He does 
not come in his name, nor a9k to be heard for his sake. He 
violates the Scriptures, which say : l ' Whatsoever ye do in 
word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Je9us. giving 
thanks to God and the Father by him." Col. iii : 17 Moham- 
medanism, however devout, sins against the teaching of this 
Scripture, for it does nothing "in the name of the Lord Jesus." 
This Scripture is founded on the fact that Christ is the one only 
Mediator. The Christian ought to do nothiDg that he can not 
do in the name of his Mediator. 

Judaism, under this dispensation, however devout, sins in 
that, rejecting Christ, it presumes to approach God in another 
name than that of Christ. Judaism has, now, no mediator with 
God. Moses is no longer mediator. Christ is the one Medi- 
ator, and Judaism rejects him. 

The moralist, also, sins, however moral and good he may be. 
He expects that God will save him for hU good de^de. He 
ignores Christ. He over-rides all idea of a mediator, :md pre- 
sumes to come in his own name. He prides himself on being a 
good man, according to his own standard. He claims to be 
truthful, to be honest, to be a good neighbor, to be kind to the 
poor, to be a good citizen, but he sees no use of confessing 
Christ, of joining the church, of being a Christian at all. He 
expects God to save him for his good deeds. In all this he 
simply rejects Christ as Mediator. He does his good deeds in 
his own name. He commends himself. He is the modern 
Pharisee who thanks God, if thankfulness dwell in his soul at 
all, that he is not like other men. He has no sympathy with 
the poor publican, who said, " God be merciful to me a sinner." 
The Mohammedan, the Jew, the moralist, and all unbelievers 
reject the Mediator, and are thereby actually possessed of " no 
hope, and without God in the world." 

3. l; The man Christ Jesus." This phrase added by the apostle 
qualifies or explains who the one Mediator is. We have before 
shown Christ to be both divine and human. The God-man, the 
"Emmanuel," " the man Christ Jesus " is the " one Mediator." 
The statement that "there is one God, and one Mediator 
between God and men" is in the present tense, was present 
when Paul wrote, and is present to-day. He is Mediator now. 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 71 

"The man Christ Jesus" was officiating as Mediator, in heaven, 
when Paul wrote. But he was still a man. He had not left his 
humanity behind when he went up on high. As he did not 
leave the Godhood above when he came down to earth and 
became a man, so he did not leave his manhood below when he 
ascended to heaven. In heaven to-day, at this hour, just now, 
" the man Christ Jesus " officiates as Mediator on our behalf. 
In our Lord Jesus Christ our humanity, our manhood, occupies 
high official station. Realizing this, let us, dear brethren, 
rejoice and be glad to-day, and let us resolve anew to be faith- 
ful and true to him, who to-day intercedes for us at "the great 
white throne " in the golden city of our God. " The man 
Christ Jesus 1 " Glorious thought ! God is not draggtd down, 
nor made dishonorable in heaven by " the man Christ Jesus," 
as a man, officiating in heaven as " mediator between God and 
men," but man is glorified, and lifted up and exalted to a station 
higher and grander than that of the angels. 

4. " Who gave himself a ransom for all." "The man Christ 
Jesus" became a ransom, that he might rescue us from the 
dominion of sin and death, and reconcile us to God. The word 
ransom in this place comes from antilutron in the original, 
and is defiued, in Bagster's Lexicon to the New Testament, 
simply " a ransom." No other definition is given. It is a com- 
pound word, its two parts being the preposition anti, and the 
noun lutron. It occurs in this passage only in the New Testa- 
ment. It is defined in the classics : " The price of redemption, 
ransom-money ; and, metaphorically, any means of ransoming 
or delivering from evil." The simple word lutron wa9 used 
once by the Lord himself. "Even as the Son of man came not 
to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a 
ransom (lutron) for many." Matt, xx : 28. Lutron is defined 
by Bagster to mean : " Price paid ; a ransom." This is all the 
definition given. Mark, x: 45, records the same words of 
Christ. The word occurs no where else. Lutron, in the class- 
ics, is defined to mean, "redemption-money, a ransom." 

Now, let us examine Matt, xx: 28, as closely and as critically 
as we can. Be it observed that this language is literal. Meta- 
phors and figures are out of the question here. Jesus here says 
that he came to do two thing?. First, " to minister," to serve. 
Second, " to give his life." On this earth he ministered, liter- 



72 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

ally, to the physical and spiritual good of others. He did not 
give a figurative life, but his literal life. He did not die a 
metaphorical death. He died a literal death on the cross. In 
the old grammar that we studied forty years ago, there was a 
syntactical rule that said : " Two or more nouns signifying the 
same thing, are put by apposition in the same case." This old 
rule applies here exactly. Jesus gave his life a ransom. Life 
and ransom are both applied to the same thing. Lutron, 
ransom, we have seen means, according to Bagster, "price paid." 
Then, the life of Jesus was, and is, the price that he paid "for 
many." There seems to be no escape from this, and in our text 
the same truth is set forth in the same way. He " gave himself 
a ransom for all. Here, himself and ransom are in the same 
case, because they are both applied to the same thing. Him- 
self is in the objective ca9e, after the active transitive verb, gave. 
But ransom is also in the objective case by apposition, because 
it means the same thing. Himself was, and is, the price that 
Jesus, our Mediator, paid " for all." Then Je^us Christ offered 
up his life, and in offering up his life he offered up himself, for 
all, and thus afforded all an opportunity of escape from the 
thralldom of sin and death. 

How perfectly he is fitted, then, to stand " between God and 
men ! " How complete a Mediator he is ! Toward man, and to 
the human side of his mediatorsbip, he presents infinite love to 
win the hearts of men, infinite wisdom to arrange the plan of 
redemption, and infinite power to accomplish the eternal salva- 
tion of all who will accept of him, love him and obey him. 
Toward God, his Father, and to the divine side of his media- 
torship, he presents infinite love, (he loves both ways,) infinite 
righteousness, in that he obeyed in all things the will of his 
Father; infinite justice in that, even in human flesh, he had 
satisfied all the demands of the law, and infinite power to pre- 
sent his brethren in love, in righteousness, in justice ; so that 
his own love, his own righteousness and his own justification 
could consistently be imputed to them, and they, thus, be 
admitted into the heavenly mansions in the Father's house. 

5. "To be testified in due time." These words have been 
regarded as of very difficult understanding. Many and con- 
flicting have been the explanations given. It is, perhaps, true 
that the religious mind of the last two centuries has been* led 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 7$ 

into confusion and fanciful interpretations by a very faulty 
rendering by King James' translators. " To be testified in due 
time " is not at all according to the syntax of the original. To be 
testified, is the king's translation of a noun. " To marturion" 
is the Greek from which they get " to be testified." Its literal 
meaning, in English, is : The testimony. The sixth verse, trans- 
lated according to the syntax of the original, is : " Who gave 
himself a ransom for all, the testimony at the proper time." 
We have already seen that himself, and ransom, are in the 
same case, and governed by the verb, gave. The Greek for 
himself is in the accusative case governed by dous (gave), and 
the Greek word for ransom is, by apposition, in the same case, 
and so is the Greek word for the testimony. Jesus gave him- 
self as a ransom for all, and also gave himself as the testimony 
at the proper times. To this there can be no syntactical objec- 
tion, and it avoids the circumlocution and the disregard of the 
Greek syntax of the common version. There only remains to 
get a correct understanding of what is meant by our Mediator 
being the testimony as well as a ransom. 

The word marturion occurs in the New Testament twenty 
times, and in the common version, correctly rendered testimony 
fifteen times; witness, in the sense of testimony, four times, and 
in our text, " to be testified," in violation of all syntax. Testi- 
mony is the correct rendering in every instance of its occur- 
rence. Let us examine it carefully. The Savior himself used 
it on the occasion of healing a leper. To the healed leper, he 
said : "See thou tell no man, but go thy way, show thyself to 
the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testi- 
mony unto them. Matt, viii: 4 ; Mark i: 44; Luke v: 14. In all 
the three accounts of the healing of this leper, marturion is with- 
out the article, and is correctly translated, a testimony. The 
fact that the man made the offering would be a proof, testimony, 
that he had been declared clean, so that the people would allow 
him again to live in the society of other people. "Unto them" 
is expressed in each one of these passages by the dative case of 
the pronoun following marturion. 

" Ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my 
sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles." Matt, x: 
18; Markxiii:9; Luke xxi: 12, 13. In these Scriptures it is 
clear that the fact that the apostles, to whom Jesus was talk- 



74 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

ing, would be brought before kings and rulers, would be a testi- 
mony against them. The arraigning of the primitive preach- 
ers of the gospel, caused the gospel to be preached in kings* 
nouses. The kings, with many of their subjects, rejected and 
thus spurned the offers of the great Mediator. At the judg- 
ment of the great day, they will stand charged with grossly 
slighting and refusing the King of kings, and the fact that 
Christ's preachers had been arraigned before them will be tes- 
timony against them. " Against them " and against the Gen- 
tiles, is here also expressed by the dative case following martu- 
rion. 

(( And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when 
ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet, for a tes- 
timony against them. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more 
tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah, in the day of judgment, 
than for that city." Mark vi: 11 ; Luke ix: 5. Here the sense 
is very plain. At the day of judgment these things would be 
testimony against these rejectors of the Messiah. The judg- 
ment of the great day will be a fearful time of reckoning with 
sinners. The very opportunities of the gospel and offers of 
rejected mercy will then come up as damning testimony against 
them. Here also, " against them " is expressed by the dative case 
of the word following marturion. But when the day of judg- 
ment comes, Jesus will be the testimony of testimonies against 
persistent sinners. He will then be clothed with the ermine of 
the judge, and the garments of the everlasting priesthood, and 
have on the crown of heaven and earth, and the very fact that 
lie gave himself a ransom, that he poured out his precious 
blood, that he submitted to be put to death, that he rose again, 
that he went up on high, that he was preached to sinners, that 
he pleaded with them, entreated them to come to him and be 
saved, and they would noi, will all be the awful testimonv that 
will consign to shame the incorrigible sinner that rejected all 
the pleadings, and tears, and sufferings of the Son of God. 
The loving entreaty of the crucified Savior, rejected to-day, 
will be the blackening testimony then, upon which the scoffer, 
the unbeliever, the liar, the drunkard, the thief, the adulterer, 
the oppressor, the covetous man, and all that know not God 
and obey not the gospel, will be consigued to everlasting pun- 
ishment and be cast into the lake that burns with fire and brim- 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 75 

stone; in the first place, prepared for the devil and his angels. 

There is another aspect of the case in which Jesus is the tes- 
timony. In the typical dispensation of Moses, the two tables 
of stone, upon which God wrote the law, and which were de- 
posited in the ark of the covenant in the most holy place in the 
tabernacle, were called the testimony. This testimony was the 
embodiment of authority and correct living. That dispensa- 
tion was all typical and is all fulfilled in Christ. When he be* 
came a ransom he became thereby the fulfillment as antitype to 
all the sacrificial offerings of clean beasts and birds of the Mo- 
saic Institution. But as every thing in that dispensation was 
typical of Christ, did he not at the same time give himself, the 
testimony, as well as a ransom, as antitype to the testimouy of 
the law kept in the ark ol the covenant, in the most holy place ? 
He is the embodiment of all law, of all authority, of all right 
living. These tables of the law are called the testimony. Ex. 
xvi: 34 ; xxv: 16, 21 ; xxvii: 21 ; xxx: 6 ; xxxi: 18 ; xxxii: 15 ; xxxiv: 
29; xxxviii: 21, and in many other places. The ark in which 
the tables were kept was sometimes called the ark of the testi- 
mony, because the testimony was in it, and the tabernacle was 
sometimes called the tabernacle of the testimony because the 
testimony in the ark was in the tabernacle, as these references 
will show if examined. 

In the ark were also the pot of manna and " Aaron's rod 
that budded," Manna was the typical bread from heaven with 
which God fed the bodies of his people in the wilderness. 
Christ is the antitype bread from heaven with which God feeds 
the souls of his people now in the wilderness of this life. 
"Aaron's rod that budded" very fitly typifies Christ. 
Christ brings the dead to life, causes life and growth to come 
out of death, very well foreshadowed by the blossoms and 
growth and fruit springing out of a dead piece of wood. 
Then do not the tables of the testimony in the ark also typify 
him? Is he not the testimony in that sense too in our text? 
Marturion is followed by the dative case here as in other places. 

We now quote the text, amending the translation so as to 
make it faithful to the Greek syntax: "For there is one God 
and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 
who gave himself a ransom for all, the testimony for appropri- 
ate times." 



76 



THE MOBEEEY PULPIT. 



Let us, dear brethren, be true to oar great Mediator ! Let us- 
so live that we shall constantly have access to the mercy seat 
above, through him. Let us love and obey him. So that he 
will be testimony for us at the last day. 

We now turn to you, dear friends, who have not availed your- 
selves of him as the ransom from your sins. Will you listen to 
his pleadings to-day ? Accept him to-day, trust him to-day, con- 
fess him to-day, obey him to-day, be a child of God to-day. Why 
stay away ? Delay is dangerous. If you die in disobedience to 
him you will be forever lost. To-day you have the opportunities 
of the gospel. Tomorrow may not be yours. In this life and on 
this earth you must make preparations for eternal joy and life 
and happiness. If you continue to neglect to obey the Savior, 
during this short life, you will never attend to it, for there is no 
room for repentance after death. The good confession has to 
be made before men. If you believe in him, if you are penitent 
for your past sins, we invite you to confess him to-day, to be 
baptized into his death and receive the remission of your past 
sins, receive adoption into God's family, and become an heir of 
eternal life. Jesus, the great Mediator, says come ; the Bride 
says come ; the Spirit says come. We plead with you to come. 
While the brethren sing: 

" Jesus thou art the sinner's friend, " 
we extend you the Savior's loving invitation. 







SERMON VI. 
CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 

Preached Lord's Day, May 2, 1880. 



Texts.— "He is the Mediator of a better covenant."— Paul. 

" He is the Mediator ot the New Testament."— Paul. 
"Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant;-"— Paul. 

My Dear Brethren and Sisters : 

We this morning resume the study ot the mediatorial office 
and work of our dear Savior. Fallen, sinful, lost and dying 
man is both unworthy and unable to approach into the divine 
and holy presence without a mediator. We have already con- 
sidered " the man Christ Jesus " as the " one mediator between 
God and men," as also the " ransom for all," and as the one " to 
be testified in due time." We have already seen that Moses, as 
mediator between God and Israel, is a type of Christ. He 
being the mediator of the first covenant, we will this morning 
study Christ as " the mediator of a better covenant," and as 
" the mediator of the new covenant." We have three texts be- 
fore us at this time. In the first, Jesus is, in the common ver- 
sion, correctly styled " the mediator of a better covenant." In 
the second, he is styled " the mediator of the New Testament," 
and in the third " ihe mediator of the new covenant." 

The word coven nt in these texts comes from diatheekee in 
the original, and testament comes from the same word in the 
Greek. We shall tre t the word testament as meaning exactly 
the same thing, i> < ne of our texts, as covenant in the other 
two, because in the original they are the same word. In this 
discourse, "new covenant" and "New Testament" mean the 
same thing. 

. f 77 



78 THE MOBEKLY PULPIT'. 

Diatheekee is the word used to express a covenant between 
God and man. Suntheekee is the word used to express a cove- 
nant betweed man and man. Diatheekee occurs in the New 
Testament Greek, thirty-three times, while suntheekee does not 
occur a single time. The former only expresses the idea of a 
covenant where one party makes all the terms, confers all the 
benefits, and the other only accepts the terms and receives the 
benefits. Such a covenant is the only one that could be made 
between God and man. Man is not wise enough nor good 
enough to even propose terms to God. Man can not pay God 
an equivalent for the blessings. Hence the gospel covenant is 
consistent with the idea of grace. 

When men covenant with men, they stand as equals, each one 
rendering to the other an equivalent blessing for the one that 
he receives. Such a covenant is expressed in Greek by the 
word suntheekee, which, as before stated, does not once occur 
in any of the apostolic and evangelistic writings. In a human 
compact, both parties are competent to make or stipulate con- 
ditions, and the old proverb that u it takes two to make a bar- 
gain," is literally true. But when it comes to God contracting 
with poor, fallen man, the proverb is shorn of much of its truth. 
God has to offer and confer all, absolutely all the benefits, and 
dictate all the terms. And it is only by God's abounding grace 
that man has the opportunity to accept of offered mercies, and 
receive and enjoy offered life and joy and peace. 

We now proceed to the careful examination of our three 
texts in their connection. While we do so, let us not forget the 
definition of the word mediator. He is one who goes between 
those who are separated, who are at variance, to bring them 
together, to reconcile them, to restore unity. Our Mediator 
stands between God and man. Having the nature and confi- 
dence of both, he labors to reconcile man to God. 

We now quote our first text in full : " But now hath he ob- 
tained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the 
mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon bet- 
ter promises." Heb. vii : 6. 

Paul is on the subject of the priesthood. He has just stated 
that Christ's priesthood is not earthly as the Aaronic priest- 
hood was. Those priests only " serve unto the example and 
shadow of heavenly things," even "as Moses was admonished 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 79 

of God when he was about to make the tabernacle," to make it 
in all things " according to the pattern " that was shown him. 
That was a dispensation of shadows and patterns, types. The 
priesthood of that dispensation was earthly, and its service 
only foreshadowed the better ministry of the heavenly dispen- 
sation. But we are under Christ and not the mere patterns of 
heavenly things. Christ officiates in a "more excellent minis- 
try " or service, as much better as the mediatorship of the " new 
covenant " is better than that of the old. The new covenant is 
better than the old, in that, it is "established upon better prom- 
ises." 

The old was established by Moses in fulfillment of the prom- 
ise of the earthly Canaan, but the new by Christ in fulfillment 
of the promise of blessings "in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." 
The new covenant is better than the old one in the following 
particulars : 

1. The salvation of the old, the Mosaic covenant, was a de- 
liverance from earthly bondage in Egypt, while the salvation of 
the new, Christian covenant, is a deliverance of the soul from 
sin. 

2. Under the old, Mosaic covenant, the power of Egyptian 
tyranny was broken, but under the new, Christian covenant, the 
tyranny of Satan is broken to pieces. 

3. Through the old covenant, one nation was honored and 
blessed, while through the new all nations are honored and 
blessed. 

4. The blessings of the old were temporal, while those of 
the new are eternal and spiritual. 

5. The old had in it no sacrifice that could take away sin, 
while the new has in it " the blood of the Lamb," by which our 
sins can be washed away and our souls made pure and clean. 

6. The old had in it no resurrection of the dead, while the 
new has in it the resurrection of our Lord from the grave to 
die no more, with the promise that he will raise us all from the 
dead. 

7. The old covenant assured the faithful son of Abraham an 
earthly home in a goodly land, during his natural life-time, but 
the new promises " many mansions," beautiful mansions, ever- 
lasting mansions, in the " Father's house." Our mediator is fit- 
ting them up for us. 



y 



80 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

8. Under the old, Israel, when their bodies were hungry, 
were fed with manna, but under the new, the spiritual Israel, 
when their souls are hungry and famishing, are fed on " the 
living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat 
of this bread, he shall live forever." This bread is the Lord 
Jesus himself. Life under the old was short, lasting but a few 
years, but under the new covenant we shall live forever. 

9. Under the old covenant, the children of Abraham in the 
flesh boasted that Abraham was their father, but under the new 
we are allowed to say, " Our Father, who art in heaven." In 
Christ we are akin to God. 

10. Under the old covenant, they wore the name Israel, the 
name given to Jacob when he prevailed, but under the new we 
are allowed to wear the name that "is above every name," "a 
more excellent name" than ange]s wear. 

11. Under the old, there was an earthly inheritance, but un- 
der the new a heavenly inheritance. The earthly inheritance 
was perishable. The goodly soil could wear out ; the barren 
rocks could take its place; the very rocks of Canaan can wear 
away. The Jew of to-day sees his earthly heritage barren and 
waste, and trodden under the grinding heel of the Moslem 
tyrant, but the " partakers of the inheritance of the saints in 
light " will never see their heritage in the hands of an enemy, 
nor see it blighted, nor barren, nor waste. 

12. The inheritance under the old covenant was limited. It 
was bounded by the territorial limits of the promised land and 
the nationality of Israel in the times of her most honored kings, 
David and Solomon. But the inheritance of ''the new cove- 
nant" is limitless, is boundle&s, is infinite. Our Mediator, hav- 
ing reconciled us to God, has made us, with himself, joint heirs 
to all things. 

Then truly is it said that: " He is the mediator of a better 
covenant;" and that this "better covenant" was also "estab- 
lished on better promises." This " better covenant " entitles us 
as covenantees, to the remission of all our sins; to deliverance 
from Satan's yoke of bondage ; to all the benefits of Christ's 
atoning sacrifice; to a resurrection from the dead; to a home 
in the Father's house, and to live eternally in the enjoyment of 
all the honors of heaven itself. 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 81 

Are we as grateful to-day, brethren, for such a mediator, as 
we ought to be? Do we realize iu our hearts how exalted are 
the honors of this new covenant, given us in the hand of our 
great Mediator? Or, are our affections so placed on the things 
of this world, and our soul sensibilities so blunted by the care 
of this world, that these heavenly honors have no charm for 
us? Let us now, at this moment, look down into the secret 
chambers of our hearts, and see how they are filled. Does 
Jesus occupy the best room in the house of your souls and 
mine? Or, are our souls so filled with the love of money, the 
love of gay apparel, the love of fashion, the love of worldly 
honor, that the mediator of the new covenant can find no place 
to dwell? Let us look, honestly, and in view of the judgment 
to come, look into oui hearts in self-examination, and see if 
Satan has been allowed a lurking place anywhere ? Self-exam- 
ination is a duty. Lord's day morning is a proper time to at- 
tend to it. In the Lord's house, with the honors of the new 
covenant before our minds, is a good place to turn the eyes of 
our understanding inward, and see what is there. If Satan be 
found skulking there, expel him at once. Bid him never show 
his deceitful face there, in your soul- house again. He is a lying 
hypocrite ; he will put on a false appearance and make you 
think that he is somebody else. He will deceive you if you 
will allow it. He generally works under an assumed Dame. 
He seldom professes his real purpose. He nearly always wears 
a false exterior. How shall we now know whether he has been 
in our hearts during the week past ? Did any old man or young 
one either allow himself to be persuaded to think that his 
stomach needed whisky or rum, and, under that impression, 
did he go into a saloon and pay money for whisky, or any other 
strong drink, and drink it? If so, Satan stole into his soul, 
perhaps in the guise of a friend, and induced him to commit 
the following sins : 

1. It was a sin to go into the saloon. " Sin is the transgres- 
sion ot the law." 1 John iii : 4. God's law commands us to 
" abstain irom all appearance of evil." 1 Thess. v : 22. Every 
thing pertaining to a saloon has the appearance of evil, and is 
evil. Frequenting saloons is an open violation of Scripture, 
and consequently a grievous sin. 

2. All Christians are commanded bv our Mediator himself 



82 THE MOBEJRLY PULPIT. 

to let their "light so shine before men that they may see" their 
" good works," and glorify their ' Father who is in heaven." 
Going into a saloon violates this Scripture also. It obscures the 
light ; puts the light " under a bushel." The older the man, the 
more prominent he is in the church, the greater the sin. 

3. It is a useless waste of the Lord's money to spend it for 
saloon whisky or any other drink sold in a saloon. 

4. Drinking saloon whisky is a sin in that, it pollutes the 
temple of the Holy Spirit. Paul says: "Know ye not that 
your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, 
which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" 1 Cor. 
vi : 19. Whisky drinking defiles the body. Beer drinking pol- 
lutes the blood. Paul says in this Scripture that a Christian's 
"body is the temple of the Holy Spirit," and that they "are 
not " their " own." In the next verse he assigns the reason — 
" Ye are bought with a price." In our last discourse we showed 
clearly that our Mediator gave himself a ransom for us. We 
belong to him. Our bodies are his, and we have no right to 
abuse them. In the same verse Paul tells the Corinthians and 
all Christians to "glorify God in" their "body, and in" their 
" spirit, which are God's." No man can glorify God in his body 
by drinking strong drink. 

Let us look again into our heart3 and see if during the past 
week any of us, through the love of money, have been led to 
over-reach our fellow man in a trade. Have we told a customer 
that an article of goods would not fade, when it will fade ; that 
eggs were fresh, when they were not ; that butter was new, 
when in fact it was stale? Have any given light weight or short 
measure ? If so, the devil has been stealthily lurking in your 
heart, pretending perhaps to be your friend, whispering in 
your ear, " make money rapidly. Your family will need a great 
deal, and then you ought to lay up something tor a rainy day." 
If you have been thus led to swerve a hair's breadth from the 
line of rigid justice and honesty, then command the wily 
tempter to depart from your heart. Have any given a loose 
reign to the tongue — that unruly member, let him remember 
that Satan is prowling round and insinuating himself into the 
recesses of his heart, for " out of the abundance of the heart 
the mouth speaks," and if words of slander, malice, envy, jeal- 
ousy, hatred, have been escaping the lips, then we may be sure 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 83 

that the devil has been tampering with the heart. Then let us 
all be very careful to heed the advice of the wise man : " Keep 
thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." 
If we can at this time make this self-examination candidly and 
conscientiously, then we can, with some degree of satisfaction, 
contemplate the high honors of the new covenant to which we 
can attain through our Mediator. 

With this look into our hearts and this honest, searching 
scrutiny of the motives by which we are moved, let us proceed 
with the investigation of our theme, as treated by the apostle 
in the words following : "And for this cause he is the mediator 
of the New Testament, that by means of death, for the redemp- 
tion of the transgressions that were under the first testament, 
they which are called might receive the promise of eternal in- 
heritance." Heb. ix : 15. This Scripture has been the subject 
of much controversy among the ablest Bible students. Any 
thing pertaining to Christ is well worthy the study of every 
man. Let us, brethren, now attempt to understand these say- 
ings of Paul, concerning our Mediator. We must modestly try 
to get beneath the surface. Paul digs deep. So must we, in 
some measure, if we would master the sublime truths and prin- 
ciples which he enunciates. 

Much of the misunderstanding of this Scripture and conse- 
quent controversy about it, is probably due to the work of the 
king's translators. They have here rendered the Greek word 
diatheekee, testament, in the sense of a will, made by a man dis- 
posing of his property, to be executed after his death. Hence, 
many have thought that Christ made a will disposing of his 
estate, to be executed after his death. But there are serious 
objections to such a theory. One is that the word diatheekee 
nowhere else in the Scriptures has such a meaning. It is the 
word everywhere else used to express the idea of covenant be- 
tween God and men. We re-translate the entire paragraph 
from the fifteenth verse to the seventeenth, inclusive, as follows : 

"And for this purpose He is Mediator of a new covenant, in 
order that, death taking place for redemption of the transgres- 
sions against the first covenant, the called might receive the 
promise of the eternal inheritance, for where a covenant is, 
necessity is. that death of the appointed be borne, for a cove- 



THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

nant is sure upon dead (victims) since it is not valid while the 
appointed (offering) lives." 

In this translation elegance of diction is entirely ignored. 
The effort is to say exactly the same thing that the Greek of 
these verses says. There are two covenants spoken of here — 
one called the new, the other the first. The first was the 
Mosaic, the new the Christian. Moses was mediator of the one, 
and Christ mediator of the other. The Mosaic is called the 
first, because it preceded the other in the order of events. The 
Christian is called the new, because it is of later date and be- 
cause it displaces the other, and further because it affords more 
blessings and better ones than the other could offer to humanity. 
In this Scripture the writer sets forth the purpose of the medi- 
atorship of Christ. It is in order that " the called might re- 
ceive the promise of eternal inheritance." The first covenant 
made no such promise. A temporal inheritance was all that it 
could offer. There was in it no sufficient redemption of the 
sins committed under it. Those even, to whom God gave the 
first covenant, could not attain to an eternal inheritance through 
its provisions, on account of the transgressions they committed 
against it and under it. It rejected the sinner, but was unable 
to take away his guilt. 

Christ's death taking place for, in order to, redemption of the 
transgressions committed by those under the first covenant, 
presents him in his true light as Mediator between God and 
man. He died not only for the sins of those of his day, and for 
our sins who have lived since his day on earth, but also for the 
sins of the men who lived and died before he came down to 
earth. He is the Mediator between God and all men. The sins 
of the Patriarchs and Jews were had in God's remembrance 
until Christ entered upon the work of reconciliation, giving 
his blood and his life that all men might have an opportunity 
of escape from sin and death. When a righteous man of Israel 
under the first covenant, in faith, in penitence, brought the 
offering stipulated in the first covenant, God forgave his sins, 
but not through the offering presented, but through Christ's 
offering, typified by all the sacrifices of the first covenant. 

God is infinite. The past, the present and the future are all 
present to him. He knows, as infallibly, what he will do to- 
morrow, as he knows what he does to-day. The blood of his 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 85 

Son, shed on the cross and offered in the court of heaven, was 
always as present to him, as much a reality to him, in Adam's 
day, in Job's day, in Abraham's day, and in the days of the 
first or Mosaic covenant, as now. God could, and did, release 
the pious patriarch and pious Jew from his sins through the 
sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ, then yet to be shed, as safely 
as he can now forgive the believers, through the same blood, 
now already shed. The sacrifice of Christ's precious blood 
was as infinitely sure to God then as now. Otherwise there 
could have been no salvation for any man living and dying 
before Christ came. " Without shedding of blood is no remis- 
sion." The blood shed had to be Christ's, too. No other could 
take away sin. " It is not possible that the blood of bulls and 
of goats should take away sins." No blood would do but the 
blood of the Lamb. Had that blood been not infinitely sure, 
the typical offerings would have been utterly worthless. But 
that being to God perfectly sure, he released the sinner under 
the first covenant and carried his sins forward, remembering 
them every year, until the atoning blood is actually offered. 
Then they were blotted out to be remembered no more forever. 
Thus, Christ died for the sins of men of all ages. Thus Christ 
stands as Mediator between God and men of all ages, Patri- 
archs, Jews, Christians, making them heirs to the '* eternal in- 
heritance." 

To enable any sinner to come to God, to be reconciled to 
God, to be one with God, it always has been necessary, and 
always will be necessary, that there be a sufficient sacrifice, an 
atoning sacrifice, a cleansing sacrifice of shed blood between 
them. God always saw the Lamb, slain from the foundation 
of the world, present before him, between himself and sinful 
man. But man could not see him. "While to God he was "slain 
from the foundation of the world," to man he was not yet slain, 
not yet offered. To reconcile a sinner to God, his sins must be 
taken away by the blood of the Lamb. Sin is the cause of the 
separation of man from God. It is sin that alienates the man 
from his Maker. Then, when the blood of Christ cleanses the 
sinner from his sins, his alienation is gone, he is reconciled. 
Sin removed, the cause of separation from God is gone, and 
the man is united to God. The atonement, the at-one-ment is 
accomplished. 



86 THE MOBEELY PTJEPIT. 

But to bring this happy result about, as we have seen, the 
Lamb slain, his blood being shed, is the unifying agency and 
power. Both parties to the separation must see him, must 
recoguize him. must meet together in him. But before he came 
to this world and died, no man could come to him directly. 
Hence the typical lamb, kid, bullock, turtle dove and young 
pigeon. The man could (in faith in God, as the one God, and 
in obedience to his command, bring his sin-offering to the priest 
at the altar, and, through the offering foreshadowing the Christ, 
its blood shed, typifying the shed blood of the Son of God), 
meet with God and be forgiven, God referring his sins to the 
blood of Calvary, that, to him, was infallibly sure. This is 
how, and why, that the death of Christ took place for redemp- 
tion, in order to redemption of the transgression against the 
first covenant. This is how, and why, Christ died for all men ; 
for those of Patriarchal and Jewish times ; for those whose 
entire earth lives preceded his incarnation and his suffering. 

We have already seen that the purpose of Christ's being 
•'Mediator of the new covenant" is that "the called" might 
be heirs to "the eternal inheritance." ."Who are the called? 
All who, having heard the invitations of the gospel, believed 
in Jesus and obeyed his commandments. The called are Chris- 
tians. "Blessed are they who are called unto the marriage 
supper of the Lamb." Rev. xix : 9. The Greek for called here 
is the same as in our text. The called, then, are they who are 
to be present at the marriage feast, when the Son of God takes 
his bride, his church, home to his Father's house. Through his 
mediatorship, the}' are now the possessors of the promise of 
eternal inheritance. Do we to-day, brethren, rejoice in this 
glorious promise ? If so, happy are we. But. if we are think- 
ing more, and talking more about an earthly, peris-liable inheri- 
tance, and laboring more to obtain the corruptible things of 
this liie, than we think, talk and work for the estate that is 
eternal, then we are become lukewarm, like ihe Laodiceaus. 
They set their hearts on earthly goods, and became proud of 
their temporal wealth. If we allow things on the earth to 
absorb our affections and become vainly proud, like they did, 
the Lord "will spue" us out of his mouth as he did them. The 
Lord is disgusted with those who profess to wear his name and 
are, at the sane time, more gratified with the wealth of this 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 87 

world, than with "the promise of eternal inheritance." He 
expresses that disgust with the strong figure, "I will spue thee 
out of my mouth." Then, dear brethren, to-day, let us realize 
that this "promise of eternal inheritance " is far more precious 
than rubies and gold. Rejoice, sisters, rejoice, brethren, be glad 
to-day ihat, through the mediatorial work of our Lord, we have 
given to us so precious a promise. Beware of negligence and 
indifference, and lukewarmness. 

But, what is "eternal inheritance?" All earthly estates are 
squandered and lost, sooner or later. The crowns that decked 
the brows of ancient kings are perished. Ancient Babylon, 
Nineveh, Thebes and Memphis are long since blotted out, and 
their glory departed. The empires of Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, 
Alexander and the Caesars are all gone, to return no more for- 
ever. The dynasties of ancient royalties have all disappeared. 
The pyramids, even, are crumbling, and the rocky ribs of earth's 
crust are wearing away. The sublunary heavens and earth are 
to be roiled together as a scroll, "shall pass away," "shall be 
burned up." But there is an inheritance that is absolutely 
eternal, that will never "pass away," will never be "burned 
up." "We repeat the question : What is it? At the judgment 
Christ will say to the righteous : " Come, ye blessed of my 
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the founda- 
tion of the world." Matt, xxv : 34. The eternal inheritance, 
then, has in it a kingdom ; a kingdom that will not pass away, 
that will never be overthrown. By the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ from the dead we are "begotten" "to an inheritance, 
incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth noi away, reserved 
in heaven for you." 1 Pet. i : 4. 

There are three descriptive words here applied to the inheri- 
tance. It is "incorruptible." It is not onlv not corrupt, but it 
can not be corrupted. It is imperishable. It is "undefiled," 
pure, chaste. It " fadeth not away." The original says unfad- 
ing. It not only is not fading, but can not fade. It is " reserved 
in heaven for you," — for Christians. Peter is writing to Chris- 
tians. This imperishable, chaste, unfading inheritance i6 laid 
up, kept in store in heaven, for all Christians. "Every one 
that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or 
mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall 
receive an hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life." 



88 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

Matt, xix: 29. These are the words of Jesus, and he puts 
" everlasting life " in the inheritance. Then the eternal inheri- 
tance is unending life in the enjoyment of an imperishable 
estate, and the exercise of princely authority in an everlasting 
kingdom. To maintain the Christian character, by continuous 
faithfulness to the requirements of the gospel, is the means by 
which we may attain to the possession of the eternal inheri- 
tance." 

" For where a testament is, there must also, of necessity, be 
the death of the testator." We have already re-translated this 
to read thus : " For where a covenant is, necessity is, that the 
death of the appointed (one) be borne." We have already 
given the reason for rejecting the word testament, and using 
the word covenant. We now give a further reason. Wills, 
testaments, do not need mediators, but administrators. But 
Jesus is a Mediator. The mediatorial office is very different 
from that of the executor of a will. Where God covenants 
with man, he appoints an offering to be killed. When the vic- 
tim is slain, and its blood offered, the covenant is of force, is 
ratified, is sure. Hence, when God covenants with man, the 
death of the appointed victim is a necessity, to make it sure. 
Under the new covenant, Christ is the appointed offering for 
the surety of the promise, in that covenant, of the remission of 
sins, and of the resurrection of the dead. Without Christ's 
death and sufferings these promises, in the nature of the case, 
would not be assured to us. But with his death they are sure. 
This is the apostolic thought, and not the making of a will. 
Christ, instead of being a testator, is the one appointed. A 
testator appoints. But the Greek in this case is thanatou * * 
tou diathemenou — death * * of the appointed (one), not death 
of the testator, who appoints. 

"For a testament is of force after men are dead; otherwise, 
it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth." We have 
re-translated this verse thus: "For a covenant is sure upon 
dead (offerings) since it is not valid while the appointed (offer- 
ing) lives." There is no word in the Greek of this verse for 
the word men. The adjective, nekros, the dead, is there in the 
dative case plural. Christ, as we have seen, was the appointed 
offering. Without his death, the covenant would not have been 
binding. The covenant became sure to man when Christ died, 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 89 

not as a testator, will-maker, but as the appointed sin-offering 
to take away the sins of men. 

To show the correctness of this, we quote the very next 
verse : " "Whereupon, neither the first testament was dedicated 
without blood, for when Moses had spoken every precept to all 
the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves 
and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool and hyssop, and 
sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying : This is the 
blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you." 
Yerses 18, 19, 20. The word covenant in these verses would 
take the place of testament in a better rendering. This is the 
ratification of the first covenant It is introduced here by the 
apostle to illustrate the points that we have been investigating. 
God made a covenant with Israel, typical of the one under 
which we live. Did the calves and goats that died, die as tes- 
tators, will-makers ? No one, for a moment, believes such an 
absurdity. They died as appointed offerings. Their blood was 
a type of Christ's. As appointed offerings, they could, and 
did, typify Christ as an appointed offering. But no animal 
could be a type of him as a testator or will-maker. Let the 
word covenant be received as the better rendering of diatheekee 
and much coufusion will disappear. 

"We now quote, and proceed to examine our third text : "But 
ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living 
God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company 
of angels ; to the general assembly, and church of the first-born, 
which are written in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all ; and 
to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the medi- 
ator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that 
speaketh better things than that of Abel." Heb. xii : 22, 23, 24. 
In this sublime Scripture, the divine penman is exalting the 
Christian's lofty honors and connections above that enjoyed by 
those living under the law. He is setting forth the blessings of 
the "better covenant" of which Christ is Mediator. There 
are eight glorious honors here mentioned, all grander and better 
than any thing the law was able to afford. "We will examine 
them in numerical order, not that these things have an order of 
events, as first, second, third. There is one act of coming. 
The one coming brought those addressed, to eight things that 
are mentioned. "We will examine them in the order of men- 



90 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

tioning in the text. This coming to all these honors is by faith : 

1. "But ye are come unto Mount Ziou." This coming into 
all these honors and blessings is through, and by means of 
Christ's mission and sufferings. Mount Zion is nere made the 
type of God's duelling place. Israel, by the mediatorship of 
Moses, had come to thundering Sinai ; but we, through Christ, 
come to the heavenly Mount where God dwells. Through 
faith in Christ, we are made rightful citizens of heaven ; and if 
we continue faithful to Christ, we shall as surely dwell there as 
Caleb and Joshua entered into and dwelt in Canaan. The 
Christian's privilege is as much superior to the Jews, under the 
law, as heaven is better than Canaan. 

2. "And unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jeru- 
salem." Through the law, the fleshly Israel had access to, and 
rights and honors in, the earthly Jerusalem. But, through the 
gospel of Christ, we have, by faith, access to the honors of the 
Jerusalem that is above. Our connection with Christ consti- 
tutes us rightful heirs to all the glories of the heavenly city • 
and, if we are faithful to him, we shall as certainly enter the 
golden city as Caleb and Joshua entered the promised lando 
Our honor is as much higher than theirs as heaven is higher 
than earth. 

3. "And to an innumerable company of angels, to the general 
assembly." "We re-translate this, aiming to adhere rigidly to 
the Syntax : And to myriads of angels, a festive assembly. 
This is just what the Greek says, and the meaning is that, 
coming into the pure relation with Christ, we enjoy a union 
with all the vast host of angelic beings. All faithful disciples 
of Christ will eventually join company with the legions of 
angels in one vast, grand and glorious assembly, to celebrate 
the love of God and the victory of our Mediator over sin and 
death. Grand, glorious assembly that! Shall we be in that 
grandest of all assemblies ? Brethren, sisters, let us resolve 
now, that by the grace of God, and a faithful continuance in 
well-doing, that we, each one of us, will constitute one in that 
glorious meeting "around the- great white throne." 

4. "And church of the first-born which are written in heaven." 
The church consists of human beings redeemed from sin. 
Through Christ we are constituted members of the church ; 
each one of us is as much a part of the church as your eye is a 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 91 

part of your self. No wonder that it is said when one member 
suffers, all the members suffer with it. How careful each one 
of us ought to be not to do any thing, not to say any thing, 
that in any way will bring pain, reproach, or shame upon the 
church, and give all members of the body pain. 

The church is also called a family. Our text says it is 
"written in heaven." The father of any well regulated family 
keeps a family record. God is the Father of this family, and 
he keeps one, too, keeps it in heaven. Is your name, my 
brother, or my sister, on the family record in heaven ? Then 
try to live every day, every hour, so that your soul shall be 
pure, and white, and clean. 

Our Father keeps also a "book of remembrance." That will 
be a faithful record. There will be no "white-washing" of sins 
on the pages of that book. If we do well, it will be there 
written to our honor. But if we have been unfaithful, have set 
our hearts on things on the earth, conformed to the world, and 
have been rebellious, it is recorded against us. If we are selfish, 
grasping, if we are stingy, our very stinginess goes to record 
in black lines on the book that will be opened and read at the 
judgment, in the presence of men, augels and devils. May the 
Lord help us to so live that these things, "written in heaven," 
cause us not to seek to hide our heads in shame when the books 
shall be opened ! 

5. "And to God the judge of all." Yes! Through our Lord 
Jesus Christ, we are come to God. We are become his children. 
We are become partakers of the divine nature. We are near 
kin to God. Upon us rests the responsibility of living worthily 
of so near a relation to God. The Jews never, uuder the law, 
received such honors as these. If we follow in the footsteps of 
Jesus we shall maintain our near kindredship to God. 

6. "And to the spirits of just men made perfect." Through 
the mediation of Christ, we that live yet on the earth and in 
the flesh, are come to, and united in fraternal fellowship with 
those whose spirits are made perfect. All the truly pious wor- 
shipers of boih Patriarchs and Jews were made absolutely 
perfect in spirit when the blood of Jesus was offered. Their 
sins could be no more remembered forever, and their spirits, 
being no longer connected with mortal bodies, are perfect. In 
Christ, we are in spirit, by faith, united to them. Thus, Abel 



92 THE MOBEKLY PUEPIT. 

and Job, Enoch and Elijah, Abraham and David, Moses and 
Daniel are perfect in spirit, and are our brethren. If we con- 
tinue true to our profession, we shall also have perfect spirits 
after awhile, and we shall join their company in person, and be 
with them forever. 

7. "And to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant." This 
is the crowning consideration. All the other privileges which 
we have been considering depend on this one. Take this one 
away, and they all fall. The man who has not come to Jesus, 
has come to none of these glorious blessings. But every one 
who comes to Jesus, comes to all these at the same time. In 
him we can also plead with God for the forgiveness of our sins, 
and he will hear us, and grant our requests. As Jesus stands 
between us and God, he pleads our cause and intercedes in our 
behalf. Our poor, weak prayers, when offered in his name, 
become mighty in the ears of the Lord of hosts. As Moses 
plead for Israel in the wilderness, so Christ pleads mightily 
for us. He is ready and willing to help us at all times. He 
will save all who come to him. 

8. "And to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better 
things than that of Abel." In coming to Christ, his blood is 
applied to our hearts, and our guilty souls are cleansed from 
the pollutions of sin. As when the blood of clean beasts and 
clean birds, under "the first covenant," was sprinkled, there 
was a ceremonial cleansing, so under "the new covenant/ 
where " the blood of sprinkling " applies to our hearts, there is 
an actual purification of our spirits from the guilt of sin. 

The common version is not correct in one particular. The 
Greek does not say that the blood of Christ speaks better 
things than the blood of Abel speaks. It seems that the king's 
translators thought that it did, however, for they have forced 
the version that they made to say so. The meaning is, that the 
blood of Christ speaks a better thing than Abel speaks. We 
re-translate thus : And to the blood of sprinkling, speaking a 
better ( thing ) than Abel ( speaks ). 

But we must close. We now ask you, dear friends, who have 
never come to Jesus, the lover of your souls, to turn to the 
Lord to-day. We ask you to come to him, to his precious 
blood, and thereby to come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly 



CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 



93 



Jerusalem, to the angelic assembly, to the church written in 
heaven, to God himself, to the spirits of just ones perfected. 
Why not come to-day and confess him? While the brethren 

sing, 

" Jesus, lover of my soul," 
we plead with you, in his name, to come before it be too late. 




SERMON VII, 
CHRIST THE HIGH PRIEST, 

Preached Lords Day, June 13, 1880. 



Texts.— "Jesus, made an high priest forever after the order of Mel- 
chisedec."— Paul. 

" Thou art a priest forever, after the order of Melchisedec."— David. 

" The Lord sware and will not repent, thou art a priest forever, after 
the order of Melchisedec. " — Paul. 

My Dear Brethren and Sisters : 

We still continue to prosecute the stuay of our Lord and 
Savior in his official relations to us. We have already given 
attention to his divine nature, then his human nature, and next 
his mediatorship. Now we ask your earnest attention and 
careful consideration of his priesthood, as set forth in the Book 
of God. Without the exercise of the priestly office, there could 
be no salvation for lost sinners. All religions have their prie&ts, 
and their altars aud their offerings. God has inseparably con- 
nected the forgiveness of sins with the offering of bloody 
sacrifice. " Without the shedding of blood is no remission." 

A priest is "one who performs sacrificial rites." — Bagster. 
The first mention of a priest, by use of that word in the Bible, 
is in Gen. xiv: 18, where Mo?es calls Melchisedec "the priest 
of the most high God." Melchisedec was not an Israelite. He 
was cotemporary with Abraham, and to him Abraham paid 
tithes. There was then a divinely recognized priesthood in the 
Patriarchal age as well as in the Jewish and Christian. The 
Egyptians, at a later day, had a priesthood that was deemed so 
important that, when Joseph bought all the lands of Egypt for 

95 



96 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

Pharaoh, in the time of the famine, the priests were allowed to 
retain their lands, while all other citizens gave up theirs to the 
king in exchange for bread. At still a later day we learn tbat 
Reuel, or Jethro, was priest of Midian. The false gods of the 
heathen also had their priests, and altars, and offerings, and 
temples. 

While the word, priest, does not occur earlier than the time 
of Melchisedec and Abraham, sacrifices were offered by Abel r 
in the first family of the humau race. The office of priest in 
the Patriarchal age, as exercised by Melchisedec, was of divine 
authority. 

We now proceed to examine our first text: "Which hope 
we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and 
which entereth into that within the veil, whither the fore- 
runner is for us entered ; even Jesus, made an high priest for- 
ever, after the order of Melchisedec." Heb. vii: 19, 20. Paul 
is here speaking of the Christian's hope as an anchor, holding 
the soul fast to the things within the veil, that is in heaven. 
Into the same place Jesus, as our fore-runner, has already 
entered. On earth he taught men, comforted the sorrowful, 
fed the hungry, healed the sick, opened blind eyes, made deaf 
ears hear, made lame feet walk, made tongues that were dumb 
talk, and restored the dead to life. He suffered the bitterness 
of a most cruel death, while on this earth, in order that there 
might, through him, be offered to the sons of men deliverance 
from sin and death. But he has entered into heaven to officiate 
as a priest, to make the necessary offering for sin. On earth he 
was not a priest, but in heaven he is a priest. In connection 
with our text, we quote from the Hebrew letter as follows: 
" Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto 
his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high 
priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for 
the sins of the people." ii : 17. 

We learn from this quotation, that, preparatory to Christ's 
entering upon the priestly office, it was necessary for him to 
become a man, " to be made like unto his brethren," to be made 
like them "in all things." Though he officiates in heaven, he is 
still a man, a glorified man. He is both merciful and faithful. 
He feels our infirmities, though in heaven, and is true to all 
that God has promised us. The end, or purpose, of his priest- 



CHRIST THE HIGH PRIEST. 97 

hood is " to make reconciliation for the sins of the people." 
The next verse says: "For in that he himself hath suffered, 
being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." 
The fifteenth verse of the fourth chapter says that " we have 
not an high priest who can not be touched with the feeling of 
our infirmities ; but was in all points tempted like as we are, 
yet without sin." These scriptures make him just such a high 
priest as we need. He meets our needs in the following par- 
ticulars : 

1. He is touched with our weaknesses. When we are lonely 
and sad, he cheers us. When our hearts are broken with 
sorrow, he comforts us. 

2 When we are tempted to do wrong, he is able, he is will- 
ing:, he is glad, to succor us in the hour of temptation. He, 
only, "is master of the situation" in the hour of our tempta- 
tions. He will not allow us to be tempted beyond our strength. 
He " will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that 
we may be able to bear it." Temptation would drag us down 
continually were it not that we have such a high priest in the 
court ol heaven. 

3. Whenever we sin, which we so often do, our High Priest is 
our only sufficiency. Any one, single sin, would drag us down to 
everlasting perdition were it not that our great High Priest has 
a sufficient offering, laid upon heaven's altar, to blot out every 
sin of the confiding soul who penitently comes to him in 
obedience to his commandments. This brings us to consider 
the words, " To make reconciliation for the sins of the people." 
President Milligan very properly says : " These words indicate 
the main purpose of Christ's priesthood. He became such a 
priest as he is, in order to expiate, by means of his death, the 
sins of the people. The word here rendered 'to make recon- 
ciliation for,' (hilaskomai) means, in classic Greek, to appease, 
or to propitiate; as, for instance, when Homer, Hesiod and 
others, speak of appeasing the wrath of the gods by means of 
sacrifices." Com. p. 102. 

President Milligan is right about the use of this word. The 
ancient Greeks supposed the gods to be angry with them, and 
they thought to put their gods in good humor by offering sacri- 
fices. They thought that the act expressed by the active tran- 
sitive verb, hilaskomai, terminated on the gods, taking away 



98 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

their wrath. Paul using this word, and the common version 
rendering it "to make reconciliation for," many have gotten 
the idea that our God is angry, and that the offering made by 
Christ, our high priest, was designed to appease his wrath, to 
put him in good humor with men. President Milligan expresses 
the meaning of the word in English by the word expiate. 
Expiate means: " To extinguish the guilt of by sufferance of 
penalty, or some equivalent ; to make satisfaction, or reparation 
for ; to atone for, as to expiate a crime." — Webster. Taking 
expiate, in the sense of Webster, "to extinguish guilt," we 
translate the passage literally and accurately as follows : 
" Wherefore, in all things it behooved him to be made like unto 
his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high 
priest in things pertaining to God, in order to expiate the sins 
of the people." If reconciliation be the idea, then the Greek 
says : To reconcile the sins of the people. Let the verb hilas- 
komai be translated to reconcile, if that be the meaning. But 
to reconcile sins is an absurdity. A man can be reconciled, but 
not his sins. Sins can be expiated, their guilt extinguished, 
blotted out. This is exactly what our High Priest does for us 
when, in faith, we come to, and avail ourselves of his oflering. 
When the love of sin, in the heart, is removed by faith in 
Christ, when the practice of sin ceases, in obedience to Christ, 
and when the guilt of sin is extinguished, by the blood of 
Christ, the sinner is then fully reconciled to God. But the 
reconciliation is expressed by another word, and not hilas- 
Tcomai. Expiation, or extinction of the guilt of sin is one 
thing, and the reconciliation of a man to God is quite a different 
thing. The former is Christ's act, the latter is the man's act. 

There is this difference between a heathen worshiper and a 
Christian worshiper: They both bring a sacrifice. The 
heathen expects, by means of his offering, to extinguish the 
wrath of his angry god, and make him gentle, loving and kind. 
The Christian, if he be intelligent, comes by faith in the offering- 
already, once for all, laid upon the everlagting altar in heaven, 
expecting, not to extinguish the wrath of his angry God, but 
that, by the blood of the everlasting offering, Christ, his High 
Priest, will extinguish the guilt of his sins, and thus enable him 
to come into the Lord's presence, and be recognized as the 
Lord's child. 



CHRIST THE HIGH PRIEST. 99 

We now proceed to quote our second text : " The Lord hath 
sworn and will not repent, Thou art a priest forever, after the 
order of Melchisedec." Psalm ex : 4. The Jewish priests were 
very particular to keep the line of descent from Aaron very 
clear ; but when Christ assumed the priestly office he claimed 
no such descent. He was not of the priestly tribe. His priest- 
hood is " after the order of Melchisedec." Melchisedec had no 
predecessor in office ; neither has Christ. He had no successor, 
neither will Christ have a successor. Melchisedec was greater 
than Abraham. So is Christ. But the Jewish priests were the 
children of Abraham, and Christ, being greater than Abraham, 
is, of course, superior in his office of priest to the Jewish priest- 
hood. 

The Psalmist says positively that "the Lord hath sworn" 
that he (Christ) should be a priest like Melchisedec. There is 
no mistake at this point, for Paul quotes this language and 
applies it to Jesus. The Jewish priest could only officiate for 
the Jews. But Melchisedec, as " priest of the most high God," 
came out to meet Abraham, of another nation. He seems to 
have been recognized of God as priest for any people. So is 
Christ. Any man, of any tribe, or tongue, or blood, may come 
to the Lord Jesus, have his sins expiated through his offering, 
and become an heir of life. 

Another important point of similarity between the two is 
that Melchisedec was a king. None of the Levitical priests 
were kings. But Christ, like Melchisedec, is "King of kings " 
as well as priest. Christ's is a royal, princely, kingly priest- 
hood. Melchisedec means " by interpretation, king of right- 
eousness, and after that also king of Salem, which is king of 
peace." Christ is a priest like that. He is a king in righteous- 
ness, and lifts those whose sins he expiates up to the character 
of righteous princes. He is Kiug of peace, and raises them up 
to the honored name of peace-makers. He makes us both 
kings and priests to God. Kejoice, and be glad to-day, brethren, 
that we are made the royal family of both heaven and earth in 
righteousness and peace. If we shall only be faithful, be 
righteous, be peaceable, be promoters of righteousness and 
peace a little while on earth, we shall join company, in a little 
while, with both Melchisedec and Jesus, and be crowned with 
glory and honor in the heavenly world. 



100 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

The appointment of Chri9t to the priesthood was confirmed 
with an oath. The oath of the Lord, like God himself, is too 
high for our comprehension. But when the Lord of heaven 
makes a promise that he himself deems of such transcend ant 
importance that he makes oath to it, we may rest assured that 
it is, in its bearings on humanity, infinite in importance, infinite 
in its effects upon our destiny. There may be, perhaps are, 
reasons for the oath in heaven and in eternity, beyond our 
comprehension. The oath was made and known in the days of 
David, if not earlier. No other priesthood was so honored, so 
far as we know. 

There are several things that God has sworn to. He swore 
by himself, because there was none greater, to Abraham that he 
would bless him, that he would multiply his children as the 
stars of heaven, and as the sands of the sea shore, that his chil- 
dren should possess the gate of their enemies, and that in his 
seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Gen. xxii : 
16-18. This oath of the Lord included both the fleshly and the 
spiritual children of Abraham. This oath of the Lord was re- 
peated to Isaac and Jacob. Moses in earnest entreaty, when 
pleading with the Lord for the Israelites, referred to this oath 
when he said to the Lord : " Remember Abraham, Isaac and 
Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, 
and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of 
heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto 
your seed, and they shall inherit it forever. Exodus xxxii : 18. 

The Lord is of loving mercy and tender kindness. He not 
only allowed Moses to plead with him for rebellious Israel, and 
to remind him of his oath to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, 
but he also granted Moses his request. There is another oath 
of the Lord that every human being would do well to heed. 
Every member of the human race of every land, tribe and 
tongue is vitally interested in this oath of our God. '• Look 
unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth : for I am 
God, and there is none else. I have sworn by myself, the word 
is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, 
that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear." 
Isa. xlv: 22, 23. 

Men can refuse to bow the knee now, but the time will come 
when they will have to do it, though it may be too late to do 



CHRIST THE HIGTH PRIEST. 101 

tthem good. God's majesty and authority will be maintained. 
«God has sworn by himself that all knees and tongues shall sub- 
mit. The man who bows now, confesses now, of his own free 
will and accord, the Lord will forgive, honor and bless. Paul 
quotes this language in Rom.xiv : 11, and says : "As I live saith 
the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall 
confess to God." All are invited now, all are earnestly besought 
to confess the Lord now, and bow the knee to him now, and 
those who do it will be honored and loved of God. But those 
who will not do it now and persist in disobedience to the end of 
this life will have it to do when the day of rewards are past. 
The scoffing atheist, who befouls his mouth with blasphemy 
now, will finally get down on his knees in shame and disgrace, 
and with his mouth in the very dust, as it were, confess the 
Lord. But to every man is offered the privilege of confessing 
him with honor and glory to himself. O, how short-sighted, 
how exceedingly unwise the man who persists in disobedience 
to God ! Why will not men see the folly of sin before it is too 
late ? 

Again : "But if ye will not hear these words, I swear by my- 
self, saith the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation." 
Jer. xxii : 5. The Lord said, by the prophet, to the king of 
Judah: ''Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver 
the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor : and do no wrong, 
do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless nor the widow, 
neither shed innocent blood in this place." Yerse 3. Upon the 
condition that the king of Judah would do these righteous 
things, the Lord promised prosperity to the king and to those 
over whom he ruled. But upon the condition that he would 
not do them the Lord took an oath by himself " that this house 
shall become a desolation." They did not obey the Lord, and 
the Lord executed his oath to the letter. His house did "become 
a desolation." The oath of the God of heaven is infinitely sure. 
What God has sworn to is infallibly certain. He promised, and 
made oath to it that : " Thou art a priest forever after the or- 
der of Melchisedec." Paul, beyond all question, applies this to 
CJhrist, and to our Elder Brother. Those then who love and 
obey God have the assurance of a priest all sufficient and for- 
ever. 

To be " after the order of Melchisedec," he had to be a man. 



102 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

Hence Christ Jesus became a man and dwelt among men. To 
be "forever"' he must be also God. Christ's priesthood, then, 
is a human priesthood, constituted at the same time a divine 
priesthood. He does not officiate on earth,, but in heaven. He 
did not. while on earth, act the part of a priest, but, glorified 
and coronated King in heaven, he entered upon the priestly 
office at heaven's altar in the heavenly court. Without this no 
sin could have been permanently taken away. Any priesthood, 
merely earthly, was incapable ot making an offering that could 
take away sin. Sin is aa offense against God, who is eternal, 
against his law which also is eternal. Then to expiate sin, 
there had to be a priest, to make an offering for sin, who was 
commensurate, in being with God and with eterDity itself^ 
But there was, and is, no being but God, who is commensurate 
with him in being. God is commensurate in being only with 
himself. All things else are younger than he. Then in some sense 
God must become the priest to make the offering, that could 
expiate sin. But the law, God's own law, said "without shed- 
ding of blood is no remission.'' Then this divine, infinite priest 
must have blood to offer, or there could be no expiation of sin, 
no extinguishing the guilt of sin. The problem to be solved 
then was how to have a divine priest, God officiating as priest, 
the God-priest with shed blood to offer for sin. The solution 
of this problem "is the mystery ot godliness : God was mani- 
fest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached 
unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into 
glory." 1 Tim. iii : 16. Jesus, the Son of God, God manifest 
in the flesh, had blood to shed as a victim, as a lamb, on the 
earth and on the cross, which he could offer, which he did ofier, 
which he now is offering for your sins and mine. His precious 
blood is a present offering for our sins. It was sufficient for 
every man, under the old dispensations, who loved and obeyed 
God. It was sufficient for the sins of all at the time of the 
crucifixion, who believed in him and obeyed him. It is still 
sufficient for us, if we believe in him, love him, and obey his 
commaudments. His precious blood shed on Calvary and of- 
fered in heaven, expiates, extinguishes the guilt of our sins. 
The high priest went once a year into the most holy place in 
the tabernacle of Moses and officiated there. When the service 
of the offering was completed he came out to the people and 



CHRIST THE HIGH PRIEST. 103 

they received the benefit of the offering- he made, and it was 
good for one year, when the sacrifice had to be renewed. Our 
high priest has gone into the most holy place of the heavenly 
tabernacle, and is officiating for us there. We need 
him there continually. We need him there at this very 
moment. The whole human race needs him there to 
expiate, by means of his precious blood, its continued sins. 
Men sin, as long as they continue in the flesh at least, and will 
need the office of the priesthood as long as they continue on 
eartb, and as long as any one of them continues to dwell in this 
world. The very best man in the world, the most devoted fol- 
lower of Christ, is liable to be overtaken in a fault. Hence the 
purest Christian needs the continual exercise of the priestly 
office of the "King of Righteousness" and of the "King of 
Peace." 

How does a sinner, living to-day, receive the benefit of the 
offering made by our royal high priest? To answer this ques- 
tion we divide it into two : 1. How does an alien sinner receive 
the benefit of the priestly office of Christ? 2. How does an 
offending child of God get the benefit of the offering made at 
heaven's altar by the high priest of onr profession ? To answer 
the first question, we explain, that we mean by an alien sinner 
any person who has attained to the years of moral responsi- 
bility and who has never acknowledged nor obeyed the Lord 
Jesus. Such an one has resting upon his soul all the past sins 
of his life. The guilt and turpitude of all the wrongs that he 
has ever committed attach to his soul. His heart is corrupted 
by the pollutions of every wicked act that he ever did. His 
spirit is blackened by every foul word that has ever escaped 
his lips. The very fountains of his soul are filled with the mire 
and filth of the wicked thoughts that have been allowed a 
dwelling place and a welcome in his mind. The guilt of his 
first impure thought, the offense of the first wicked word, the 
criminality of the first sinful act, all still stick to his soul. His 
first sin is still unforgiven. All subsequent sins, whether many 
or few, remain unforgiven, and the load of them all weighs the 
soul down and drags it down to everlasting perdition and woe. 
Such is an alien sinner. He is a stranger to the kingdom of 
God. His soul has never yet been affected by the priesthood 
of Christ. The offering has not yet touched his heart. The 



104 THE MOBEEIiY PULPIT. 

answer to our question involves the law of pardon to an alien. 
We have already seen that there is no remission of sins without 
Ihe shed blood of Christ offered above. The law of pardon, 
then, is the process by which such a sinner can come into con- 
tact with the offered blood of Christ. The process stated, with- 
out stopping to argue it here, is as follows : (1.) The alien must 
hear the gospel. (2.) He must believe it with all his heart, so 
that he may come by faith. (3.) He must repent of all his past 
sins, must turn away from them, must cease to practice them. 
He must be sorry enough for his sins lo quit them. (4.) He, 
having first believed and then repented, is commanded to be 
buried with his Lord and Master in baptism. (5.) When he 
does this the Lord forgives, remits, blots out all his past sins. 
There are two good reasons why the Lord pardons all his past 
sins at that particular moment. One is that all gospel blessings 
come in the name of the Lord Jesus, and the believing, peni- 
tent sinner comes into the name of the Lord when he is bap- 
tized. The other is, that he is baptized into the death of the 
Lord, and the Lord's blood, which cleanses from all sin, was 
shed in his death, aud when the body of the believing penitent 
is buried in the likeness of the burial of the Lord's body, and 
raised up in the likeness of his resurrection, his spirit comes 
under the influence of the cleansing element in Christ's offer- 
ing — hia shed blood, which was shed for the remission of sins — 
and his sins are, by the blood of "the crucified One," all blotted 
out and the guilt of them extinguished. His sins being gone, 
the man is become a child of God and an heir of God. He has 
attained to the full benefit of Christ's priestly office for the 
alien sinner. 

The answer to our second question involves the law of par- 
don for the child of God who offends. If the gospel were 
purely legalistic we could none of us attain to heaven, though 
we be no longer aliens. We do not, we can not, live perfect 
lives, even after becoming members of the Church. This is 
where our High Priest is so infinitely valuable to us. His offer- 
ing is our means of escape from the consequence of our many 
offendings. The law of pardon for an erring brother has in it 
three things: (1.) Confession of the sin. "If we confess our 
«ins,he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse 
us from all unrighteousness." 1 John i : 9. (2.) Repentance. 



CHRIST THE HIGH PRIEST. 105 

(3.) Prayer. "Repent, therefore, of this thy wickedness, and 
pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be for- 
given thee." Acts viii : 22. In these scriptures, erring, sinning 
disciples are taught to conless their sins, to repent of their sins, 
and to pray for forgiveness. Simon also asked Peter aud John 
to pray for him that he might escape the consequences of his 
sin. But when we pray we always come in the name of our 
Lord Jesus Christ; we only ask to be forgiven for his sake, in 
his name and through the offering of his shed blood. This 
prayer brings our souls to the altar of God with the blood of 
our High Priest on it, and in the expiation of our every sin we 
get the full benefit of his offering. 

We now quote our third text in full: "The Lord sware and 
will not repent, thou art a priest forever after the order ot Mel- 
chisedec ; by so much was Jesus made a surety ot a better cove- 
nant." Heb. vii : 21, 22. This is a quotation of our previous 
text from David, with the language : " By so much was Jesus 
made the surety of a better covenant" added. We use the 
word covenant where the common version has testament. In 
this verse we encounter a new word applied to Jesus in con- 
nection with the fact that he was appointed to the office of 
priest by an oath of the Lord. We have before us three com- 
mentators— Dr. Adam Clark, Dr. Albert Barnes and Pres't R. 
Milligan. They each have a different view of the idea repre- 
sented by the word surety, or rather about the word enguos, 
rendered surety. Dr. Clark thinks that it is used in the sense 
of mesitees— mediator. But this seems hardly possible. The 
two words are quite distinct in their meaning. Dr. Barnes 
seems to think that the meaning is, that Christ, by virtue of 
his appointment as a priest by an oath, became man's bondsman 
or security that the law against sin should be satisfied, and man 
thereby justified; that, becoming a man and giving himself a 
ransom for sin and his blood for the expiation of sin, he satis- 
fies all the demands of the law against the sinner. This view 
of the case will be, or rather has been, received by many. u The 
word enguos does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament ; 
but in classic Greek, it means a surety, a sponsor, or a bondsman: 
one who pledges his name, property or influence that a promise 
shall be fulfilled, or that something else shall be done. In this 
sense it is manifestly used in our text. Jesus has become the 



106 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

surety, sponsor, or bondsman of the New Covenant. # * * 

* * The argument of the apostle requires us to understand 
this security as given on the part of God for the greater en- 
couragement and consolation of his children; just as he gave 
the oath to Abraham and to his seed after him. ' Jesus,' says 
Lunemann, 'is become the surety of a better covenant; that is, 
in his person security is given to men that a better covenant is 
made and sanctioned by God. For Christ, the son of God, be- 
came man to publish this covenant on earth ; he has sealed it 
with his death and sufferings; and by his resurrection from the 
dead, he was declared with power to be sent by God as the 
founder of such a covenant.'" 

With the further fact that God's oath appointed his Son priest 
forever, that the priesthood continues forever, we close this dis- 
course. Each one of us needs this priestly work of our Mas- 
ter every day, and if his priesthood were to terminate now we 
should, none of us, ever reach heaven. We shall need to plead 
his offering the last day that we live on earth. We shall need 
it at the judgment of the great day, for his priesthood will be 
our title to a mansion in the Father's house. Through his 
priesthood, he will introduce us into the society of the heav- 
enly world. We are to be the companions of the angels who 
never sinned. But sinners as we are could never be made the 
companions of sinless angels, or any other sinless beings, with- 
out Christ's priestly office to extinguish the guilt of our sins. 
Let us, dear brethren, be yery careful to heed Paul's admoni- 
tion, when he says : " Seeing then that we have a great high 
priest, that has passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, 
let us hold fast our profession." Yes, u let us hold fast our pro- 
fession." Let us ever cling to Jesus, be faithful to him, love 
him, trust him, obey him even unto death. Then all the glo- 
ries of heaven will be ours. 

Now we turn to you, dear friends, who are yet aliens and 
strangers to our great high priest, and ask you to obey him 
now, confess him to»day, receive the expiation of your sins to- 
day, become a child of God to-day and be an heir of eternal 
life to-day. 

While the brethren sing : 

" Come to Jesus now," 
we earnestly invite you, and plead with you to come. 



SERMON VIII, 



BACCALAUREATE SERMON, 

Delivered before the Graduating Class of Christian 
University at Canton, Mo., June 3, 1880. 



Text.—" Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that 
needeth not to t>e ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."— Paul. 

Young Gentlemen and Ladies : 

In accordance with a time honored custom we are, to-day, 
assembled in this temple of learning to witness the closing- scene 
of your student life, and the beginning of your wider career on 
the broader stage of human life. One part of the day's pro- 
ceedings is the addressing to you of a Baccalaureate Sermon. 
Upon the invitation of my highly esteemed brother and your 
beloved President, R. Linn Cave, I have consented to undertake 
the task of addressing to you that discourse. Allow me to say 
that I feel honored in being permitted to stand in this place and 
to talk to a graduating class of Christian University. I have 
always been proud of the work done by this Institution. Her 
founders and her distinguished presidents have been my breth- 
ren. Though some have " passed over the river," they are still 
my brethren beloved. 

Our text to-day is the following language : " Study to show 
thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be 
ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." 2 Tim. ii : 15 

You recognize these as the words of the apostle Paul. They 
are addressed to a young man. This young man was a preach- 
er of the gospel and a teacher in the church. They express the 
apostle's advice, exhortation, command to him in that capacity. 

107 



108 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

Yet there is valuable thought there for every person, especially 
for the young, for the educated young. The first thought, to 
which we invite your attention, is expressed by the word work- 
man. Wherever a workman is, there is work to do, labor actu- 
ally performed. 

The word workman is from ergatees in the original, and oc- 
curs in the New Testament sixteen times, and means a laborer 
in any department of human activity. It is rendered laborer, 
workman, and worker. It applies to the man who labors with 
his hands on the farm or in the shop, or anywhere else. It also 
applies to the man who toils in the vineyard of the Lord in 
things spiritual. This word suggests to us, at once, that in the 
economy of God there is work to be done. Work is expected 
of every man. An idle person is not, and can not be a Chris- 
tian. You have just completed an appointed amount of mental 
labor belonging to the curriculum of study in this University. 
It was work from the day of j r our matriculation until the day 
of your graduation. If any of you have been looking forward 
to this day as a release from hard work, you have been making 
a sad mistake. If you have been looking forward to this day 
as a simple release from the disciplinary restraint and lawful 
control of jour teachers, you have been making a sad mistake. 
But I am sure that the President of this Institution and his co- 
laborers are too wise and have too just a conception of human 
life, and too conscientious a regard for their duty to you, to 
allow you to have fallen into any such mistake. 

The day of graduation brings with it a doubling of the work 
to be done. It does not mean that your education is finished. 
It only means that you have progressed so far that you will now 
be able to do the work of both teacher and pupil. If the time 
ever comes when we cease to learn, the time will then have 
come when there is little need that we should longer live. The 
degree conferred upon you to-day and the diploma given you, 
are the formal declaration by the authorities of Christian Uni- 
versity, that you are now sufficiently advanced to be entrusted 
with the oversight and instruction of yourselves. From this 
day you are in large measure to be your own teachers. If your 
growth in knowledge shall stop where you now are, that fact 
will be ample proof that you are poor teachers. Under the in- 
struction of the President and Professors of this Institution^ 



BACCALAUREATE SERMON. 109" 

you have grown in science, in literature, in knowledge. If that 
growth be less rapid, or cease altogether, it wil.. oe because you 
are not as good teachers as are those to whom you bid adieu 
to day. 

Hitherto you have been confined mainly to the necessarily 
narrow limits of the college curriculum. But, after this, you 
have the broad field of all the sciences, all the languages, all the 
literature before you, and you must, tor yourselves, select the 
field in which, hereafter, you will industriously work. 

Our educations will never be finished. We are to continue 
to be forever. Our existence is infinite iu duration. The fields 
of knowledge are also infinite. Then, we may push our re- 
search after increased knowledge to all eternity. Our bodies 
get their full growth, wear out and die. Not so our minds. 
The only decay to which they are exposed is, that the bodily 
machinery, through which they now work, wears out. But in a 
little while God will give us new bodies that will never 
wear out. He will give us eyes that will never become dim, 
ears that will never cease to hear accurately, tongues that will 
never become dumb, cheeks that will never lose the ruddy flush 
of youth, bauds that will never lose their cunning, feet that 
will never stumble, and voices that will be clear, melodious, 
eloquent, and musical forever and forever. Then will our 
minds go bounding forward in the pursuit of greater knowl- 
edge, untrammeled and unclogged by the ills to which mortal 
flesh is heir in the present life. To-day is, indeed, commence- 
ment day with you. To-day you begin the work that is never, 
never to end. To-day your earthly guides, who have hereto- 
fore so faithfully, so lovingly smoothed the path for your leet, 
helped you over the rough places, thrown the light of their 
profounder scholarship and their larger experience upon the 
dark places, withdraw their guiding hands. From this day you 
will have to take the helm in your own hands and pilot your 
own boat. From this day you will have to conduct your own 
train. If your boat goes to the bottom, if your train is wreck- 
ed after this, you will have yourselves to blame for it. You 
are to-day declared to be competent workmen. Just now, you 
begin the work of proving the declaration true or of proving 
it false. 
Young Ladies, young Gentlemen, allow me, in connec- 
h 



HO THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

tion with the workman to call your attention to a growing evil 
in American society ! It is this : There is a large element of our 
people who have come to despise work. There are too many 
that are inclined to snub the working man. In the estimation 
of too many, the calling or trade followed by a man, is made 
the measure of the respectability of the man. It is too com- 
mon that the well dressed idler is admitted into society and 
flattered because he is supposed to have mouey, and wears fine 
clothes Idleness in broadcloth, and idleness iu costly silks, is 
not entitled to our respect. "We condemn it in rags. Why not 
condemn it in costly apparel ? Paul says to Christians : " Work 
with your own hands; as we commanded you* that ye may 
walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may 
Tiave lack of nothing." Actual work is a Christian duty. The 
man who pegs shoes, does so in obedience to the divine will 
and honors himself in the sight of God. The woman who 
bakes bread, keeps her house in order, and takes care of her 
children, honors herself before her God, and in the eyes of her 
husband and all sensible men. Idleness is an inexcusable sin, 
being an open violation of Scripture. When Paul says : u Work 
with your own hands," he uses the verb ergazonwi, which bears 
the same kindred relation to ergatees, workman, in our text, as 
our verb to work bears to the noun workman. While, in our 
text, Timothy is commanded to be a workman in the ministry 
of the word, all Christians are positively commanded to be ac- 
tual workers, toilers in some department of human industry. 
There is no place for lounger? and lazy idlers in the kingdom 
of God. 

Again: -'For even when we were with you, ihiP we com- 
manded you, that if any would not work, neither should he 
eat." 2 Thess. iii: 10. This wa- sound gospel doctrine in Paul's 
day. It is just as sound now. This entire earth-life means 
work, for all who are able. The man or the womau who will 
persist in refusing to do some kind of real work, something 
that contributes to the supply of human want, is guilty of rob- 
bery when he eats. He eats that which belongs to another. All 
must work in some department of human industry. God slaw 
does not say that all men shall work at any one calling. Nor 
does it say that any particular individual shall work at any 
particular trade. God simply says that all must work. There 



BACCALAUREATE SERMON. Ill 

are but two limitations upon a man's entire freedom of choice : 
1. He must not choose idleness. He must work. 2. He must 
not choose a calling that injures the human race. He must not 
follow a business that destroys either the bodies or souls of the 
people. But, with these limitations, any man is at liberty to 
engage in any department of human labor to which his inclina- 
tion and the exercise of his common sense lead him. 

We have already condemned the growing sentiment that a 
man is to be despised because he labors with his hands. The 
man who plows, if he be honest and virtuous, is entitled to as 
much respect as any other man of equal integrity. The fact 
that he plows is to his credit, instead of being a disparagement. 
The man who digs wells is following an honorable calling. 
Well-digging contributes very largely to the supply of human 
want. The well-digger is a benefactor of his race. So is the 
blacksmith, the carpenter, the painter, the miner, the stone-cut- 
ter, the bricklayer, and a hundred others. He who thinks less 
of his fellow man, simply because he earns his bread by follow- 
ing one of these callings, is very unwise. 

But there is another pernicious mistake. It is that other em- 
ployments are not work. The calling the mechanical trades 
and agricultural employments, work, to the exclusion of all the 
mercantile and professional departments of business, making 
the impression that these are not work, that they are not toil- 
some, is working serious mischief. The young lady or the 
young gentleman who seeks to occupy a place in the halls of 
learning as a teacher, with the idea that it is not work, is not 
hard work, has no just conception of the teacher's life. He or 
she who would shun work, and very hard work at that, is utterly 
unfit to fill a place in the recitation room of the humblest school 
in the land. The young man who expects to escape work by 
adopting the medical profession, will be a stupendous 
failure. He will have but few patients and they had better 
have no doctor. The young man who thinks to escape work in 
the legal profession will be a similar failure. The young man 
who seeks the pulpit to avoid hard work is and will be forever 
a miserable failure. His laziness will haunt him at the day of 
judgment. The Savior himself toiled industriously until, 
crowned with thorns, he was nailed to the cross. In heaven he 
still works for our good. He who would shun work, should 



112 THE MOBEKLY PULPIT. 

never think of being called a pastor of any church. A non- 
working, easy going pastor, will destroy any church over which 
he presides. The spiritual growth of the members will soon 
be suspended under his administration. An idler, a shirk 
from hard work, is as certain and complete a failure in trie pul- 
pit, in the school room, at the bar, in the sick room, behind the 
counter, as a lazy tramp in a cornfield or in the work shop. 
Wherever you find a successful pastor, one worthy to be pro- 
nounced a success, you will find the same man to be a hard 
worker. He is intensely busy. He both reads and writes, he 
studies intensely, he carries his congregation as a burden on his 
heart all the time. There are no harder worked men in this 
country, in this world indeed, than the really competent pastors. 
Let no man dare to desecrate the office by bringing a dislike for 
work into it. The genuine pastor loves his work. So does the 
accomplished teacher of science and literature. They who do 
not love curves, and lines, and angles, and siues, and tangents 
and equations and proportions, and who do not take delight in 
finding the value of x, are not fit for Professors of Mathemat- 
ics. They who do not like to dig about, the roots of Greek 
verbs are unfit for professors of languages. They who find no 
pleasure in their work are idlers. Their labors will not be prof- 
itable to their employers nor to themselves. Work, that the 
laborer delights in, is geneially well done. 

Let us now attend to the exegesis of our text. The word 
rendered study is found eleven times in the Greek New Testa- 
ment, but is nowhere else rendered study. We mean in this 
country, by study, to sit down to books, maps, and apparatus, 
and, by mental application, to gather and classify facts, solve 
problems, master languages, and compose discourses, essays, 
and theses. Any man, filling the place in the church occupied 
by Timothy, must study, ought to study faithfully and thorough- 
ly in the ordinary acceptation of that word. He can not obey 
the command given to Timothy without close study, witoutthe 
use of books. The word is spoudazo. Paul uses it eight times, 
Peter three times. In this same epistle, it occurs in the ninth 
verse of the fourth chapter: "Do thy diligence to come unto 
me." "Do thy diligence" comes from exactly the same Greek 
as, study, in the text. It is spoudason, imperative mood, second 
person singular, aorist tense, in both places. "Do thy diligence" 



BACCALAUREATE SERMON. 113 

as a good rendering of the apostle's thought. Timothy is com- 
manded to make a determined effort " to come shortly." Ba dil- 
igent "to come," be diligent "to shew thyself a workman." 
" Do thy diligence to come before winter," verse 21. " Be dili- 
gent to come unto me to Nicopolis." Titus iii: 12. The word 
is the same in all these places, and the meaning is unmistakable. 
It is clear, then, that the apostle commanded Timothy, and all 
other preachers as for that matter, to be diligent in effort to be 
such workmen as God will approve. To do this in our day will 
necessitate the study of books, especially, the thorough and crit- 
ical study of the Bible. 

"Approved unto God" requires a test that shall be satisfac- 
tory to God. Dokimos, here rendered approved, is defined 
"Tested and proved by trial."— Conybeare and Howson. 
"Proved, tried ; approved ajter examination and trial." — Bag- 
ster. Timothy is instructed to be diligent to prove himself 
worthy of God's approval by doing the right kind of work, in an 
acceptable manner. A workman is approved after he does good 
work, not before. He who does good work any where, will have 
no need to be ashamed, but he who does poor work, and especial- 
ly he who does not work at all ought to be ashamed. At the 
judgment he will be ashamed if not before. The preacher does 
good work and is approved unto God when he is "rightly di- 
viding the word of truth." The word rendered "rightly divid- 
ing " means cutting straight. "Eightly dividing," in this place 
is a pretty good rendering of the apostle's thought. The whole 
verse may be paraphrased a^ lollows : Be diligent to present 
yourself to God, approved by having done good work, a work- 
man who has no occasion to be ashamed of his work, having 
preached the gospel correctly. 

Young Ladies and Gentlemen, to-day you complete your 
college course. The battle of life is before you. Doubt- 
less you all desire to be workmen in some department of 
human industry and human usefulness. You can do good, be 
useful and happy in almost any proper calling. All the branches 
of industry are open to you. Some one of them, each one of 
you must enter, and in it do your life work, or fall under the 
condemnation of God for being idlers. None of you intend to 
be idlers. You intend to be workers. Allow me to say to you 
that to be happy, to be honorable, to be a blessing to others, 



114 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

you are not obliged to be, any one of you, a physician, a law- 
yer, or even a pulpit preacher. These are both honorable and 
useful professions when their duties are intelligently, ably and 
conscientiously discharged. The two former of these profes- 
sions are crowded. The country is overstocked with doctors, 
so it i 8 with lawyers. An able physician is a very useful man, 
and the people need him ; but an incompetent one, a quack, is a 
dangerous personage to be in any community. If a workman, at 
all, he is not approved of God, and ought not to be approved of 
men, and ought to be ashamed. An able lawyer, when honest 
and true, is a useful citizen. But when incompetent and dis- 
honest, he is a curse rather than a blessing. A lawyer who 
seeks to get men into lawsuits in order to make business, ought 
to be abated as a nuisance. There is no profession in which 
men engage more noble than preaching the gospel. But even 
that God-like work is often disgraced by incompetents and 
hypocrites. If any of you are inclined to the healing art, be 
sure to make thorough preparation before you venture on the 
work of dealing with the lives of men. If you are inclined to 
the law, then, know the law well, defend the right, plead for 
the right, but do not, for conscience's sake, knowingly, defend 
the wrong. There are some lawyers who appear to make it the 
business of their lives to evade the law, to prevent the execu- 
tion of the law, and to help the very vilest of criminals and 
rascals to escape the punishment which is justly due them. If 
you desire to preach Christ to your fellow men, then make the 
best preparation that you can. Be sure to familiarize yourself 
with God's own book, stick close to that and you will do well. 
But do not overlook the vast field of human industries that 
are not called professional. Agriculture, in our day, and in our 
country, is assuming an importance and a respectability here- 
tofore not awarded to it. There is no one, more significant 
mark of an improvement in American civilization, than the 
rapid tendency of agriculture forward and upward. We now 
have agricuUnral colleges and universities. Men of cultivation, 
refinement and learning are now proud of being farmers. The 
farm, the garden and the orchard are become classic. While 
the farm does not yet require every farmer to be a college 
graduate, the larm is now worthy of a graduate for its master. 
The man who improves the quality and increases the quantity 



BACCALAUREATE SERMON. 115 

of corn and wheat, and other grain grown in this country, is a 
public benefactor. The man who discovers new and better 
varieties of apples, and peaches, and plums, and cherries, and 
other fruits, who finds out how to make the crop more certain, 
who discovers the means of protecting and prolonging the 
lives of the trees, is a contributor to the general good. He 
will benefit both the morals and the bodily health of the people. 
The man who improves the stock of horses, cattle and sheep in 
the country, confers a blessing upon his race. A woman in 
Iowa, of late years, has imparted quite an impetus to bee 
culture. The increase of the busy little workers, and the better 
protection of their lives, would be a great blessing. Who has 
a better right to do that work, to achieve that honor and to 
reap its rewards, than an educated woman ? They who will 
increase the beauty of the rose, the pink, the lily, and cause 
them to live longer, and bloom and blush for a longer period 
will make a valuable addition to the sum of human happiness. 
Who can do these things better than an educated woman? 
Who can do them so well? 

God has given us a glorious earthly heritage in this western 
world. But he has wisely and righteously given it to us in the 
rough. He has given us beautiful rivers for highways of travel, 
both for pleasure and profit. But these rivers are obstructed 
by sand-bars, sawyers and rapids. There is great need for 
both muscle and brain, for trained intellect, to clear out these 
obstructions. These rivers are yet to be bridged in many 
places. These broad States, instead of forty millions of people, 
are soon to have hundreds of millions. To dres9 up this conti- 
nent, to adorn it, to polish and burnish it for the coming mill- 
ions, there is honest, honorable and profitable employment for 
every one. God has given us iron, and lead, and zinc, and 
nickel, and copper, and silver, and gold, in profuse abundance 
But they are stowed away in the bowels of the earth in the 
crude rocks. To get them from the mines, to smelt and convert 
them into the forms in which they are useful to man, educated 
mind and trained muscle are both absolutely necessary. For 
ages the aborigines of this continent trod beneath their savage 
feet the rich store-houses of limestone, of the sandstones, of 
granite, of marble, of coal-beds, of iron, and of silver, and of 
gold; and yet, to them these treasures were worthless. Why 



116 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

o them worthless? Not because they were physically and 
muscularly too weak to obtain them, but because of the entire 
lack of intellectual and spiritual development. We are bring- 
ing up the coal, warming our persons, cooking our food, 
driving our machinery, lighting our houses and our streets 
with it — not because of our superior muscularity, but because 
we are, in some good degree, an educated people. It requires 
educated mind and educated muscle both, to do this work. 
The architect builds the house in his mind before the mechanics 
begin the work of construction. The savage, for this reason, 
can build nothing better than his uncouth wigwam. His mind 
being wholly uneducated, he can erect no ideal structure, and 
there is nothing for his brawny muscles to do. Muscle and 
nerve are to be educated, too. But muscle can, in execution, 
never excel the ideal in the mind, can never go beyond it. A 
more beautiful temple earthly can never be constructed than 
the finest ideal conceived in the mind of the most excellent 
architect. 

For this reason, a savage nation can not survey and construct 
railroads, build steamships, nor develop and utilize the sources 
of food and raiment and shelter laid up for us in the great 
store-houses of nature, that our Creator has put within our 
reach. The development of the resources of this continent is 
yet in its early infancy. Its vast sea coast needs to be explored 
and accurately surveyed. Its rivers and harbors are to be 
made more safe. Its mountains, in many places, are yet to be 
tunneled. Its swamp lands are to be drained, and its rich bot- 
tom lands protected against overflow. Its arid wastes are to 
be irrigated and made fertile. Its atmospheric and oceanic 
currents are to be investigated and better understood. The 
soils are to be more thoroughly analyzed, and, consequently, 
better understood and more skillfully and profitably cultivated. 
The rivers and lakes are to be fully stocked with the best 
varieties of fish for human food. There is immense room yet 
for the work of development and improvement, and an immense 
demand for educated workers, engineers, surveyors, machin- 
ists, architects, skilled mechanics, scientific farmers, artizans, 
scientists, industrious, active, enterprising. We need to-day, 
and we shall have after awhile, a great improvement in the 
quality and in the preparation of human food. The American 



BACCALAUREATE SERMON. 117 

people need a reformation in eating. They need to eat far less 
-expensively, and thereby eojoy better health and live longer. 
The women, the educated women, are the proper ones to 
inaugurate and carry forward this reformation. 

Then, there is the great field of educational labor. In a 
country like this, where there is an opportunity for every child 
in the land to become learned, there is a vast amount of mental 
work to be done by teachers. The schools, and colleges, and 
universities will constantly need an army, a large army, of well 
educated, pious women and men to do the work of instructing 
in the various departments of human learning. This army of 
teachers ought to have, and constantly will have, a large number 
of women in it. "Woman is peculiarly adapted to teaching in 
many of the branches of scientific and literary education. The 
profession of teaching ought to be highly esteemed. Indeed, 
it would be difficult to exalt it too highly. It has not yet been 
honored as it should be. But the tendency is in the right 
direction. The teacher's work will endure forever. The 
man who polishes a piece of granite, or of marble, or steel, 
until it is beautiful, feels a pride in his work, because it will 
probably endure for many years. Bat the granite will perish, 
the marble will be ground to powder, and the steel will wear 
away and be gone. But the teacher works not on granite and 
steel, that some time will disappear, but on hearts, understand- 
ings, minds that will continue to be forever. Young ladies, 
young gentlemen, If you become teachers, remember that your 
work will remain forever. The engraver's tools leave their 
impress on stone and metal. But old father Time will event- 
ually obliterate those lines. But when you, as teacher, in clear 
cut letters, write your impress on the tablets of your pupil's 
mind, you are doing work that will endure after the body dies, 
and after this world shall have passed away. As a teacher, 
you do your work for eternity. Then, in the fear of God, and 
in the love of your pupil, do it well. If your work be well 
done, as Paul commanded Timothy, you will not need u to be 
ashamed." Teaching belongs iu the upper story of all human 
labor. 

Near akin to this noble work, and at the topmost pinnacle of 
the temple of all human achievements, is the preaching of the 
gospel of Jesus Christ to lost sinners. This is teaching, too. 



118 THE MOBEKLY PULPIT. 

But the gospel lesson is the grandest lesson of all. This lesson 
of the great Teacher, instilled into a human heart, purges out 
sin, exalts the aspirations, purifies the motives and lifts up the 
affections to things above. A man, or a woman, who turns a 
soul to Christ, does the grandest deed performed by man. A 
man or a woman never did, and never will do any other act so 
God-like as the bringing the lost ones to the King of Zion. 
While eternity's ages roll endlessly on, yon will never be 
ashamed of having induced a sinner to come to Christ. The 
deed will honor you forever and forever. 

Finally, the work of teaching the gospel, of bringing lost 
ones to the dear Savior, is by no means confined to those who 
occupy the pulpit. Woman can do great good in this work, 
and do it, too, without entering the pulpit, or becoming pastor 
or bishop of the church. The family circle affords her a field 
to preach Christ. The Sunday school opens to her a field amply 
large. She has plenty of room to work for the Master in the 
highest department of human labor. Let every gentleman and 
every lady in this class be an active worker in the Lord's vine- 
yard, " approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be 
ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." 

Now, O Lord, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we 
beseech thee to bless Christian University ; bless its trustees ; 
bless its president ; bless its professors; bless the class of 1880. 
Help us all to so live that we may meet " around the great white 
throne." Amen. 



SERMON IX, 
SELF-CONTROL, 

Preached Lord's Day, September 12, 1880. 



Texts— "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out/and cast it from 
thee."— Jems. 
" If thy right hand offend thee cut it off and cast it from thee."— Jesus. 
li If thy foot offend thee, cut it off."— Jesus. 

My Dear Brethren and Sisters : 

Our theme this morning is self-control. It is the duty of 
every Christian to exercise control over himself. He must 
control his tongue, his hands, his feet, his appetites, his desires, 
his thoughts or to sum it all up in one word, he must control 
himself. Failure to do this is the original cause of all the fail- 
ures in the manner of life of Christian people, and the original 
cause of all the apostasies from ihe religion of Christ Jesus. 
One man fails to control one appetite and becomes a glutton 
and a druukard. Another gives rein to another appetite and 
he becomes a debauch e and a libertine. Another fails to gov- 
ern his love of money and becomes covetous, idolatrous. 
Another yields to the love of place and power and tame, and 
becomes a corrupt political ringster and tyrant. Another yield- 
ing still further to the love of money or the appetites, becomes 
a swindler, a thief, a robber and even a murderer in cold blood. 
Another neglects to control his wrath and he too becomes a 
murderer. Another gives a loose rein to his tongue and he 
becomes a mischief- maker, a tattler, a busy-body and a liar. His 
unbridled tougue involves him in broils and strifes with his 
fellow men. 

This self-control, so necessary to successful Christian life, is 
subjective, that is, it is within. The inner man is the one who 
exercises the controlling power. It is, however, in its manifes- 
tations, often objective, that is, it is the outer man who is con- 
trolled. When the wise man says: ''Keep thy heart with all 
diligence, for out of it are the issues of life," it is wholly sub- 
jective. In that case the fountain whence come both the inner 

119 



120 THE MOBEELY PULPIT. 

and the outer life, is the thing governed. This fountain is 
within, and is to be kept not by the outer, but by the inner 
man. But the man who is " able also to bridle bis whole body," 
manifests his self-control objectively, in that the outer man is 
governed and kept in proper bounds. 

In all cases the controlling power is the inner man. But the 
man within, to be able to control successfully must be a child of 
God, in order that he may have the help of God's Spirit in his 
work of self government. Paul prayed that the brethren at 
Ephesus might " be strengthened with might, by his Spirit in the 
inner man." The world is, and always has been, and always 
will be a failure in self-control. One reason is, the world is 
destitute of the Holy Spirit. 

The investigation of our theme brings us to the consideration 
of several Scripture texts that have been considered somewhat 
difficult of understanding. We quote the first one in full: 

"Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou 
shalt not commit adultery. But I say unto you, That whoso- 
ever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed 
adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye 
offend thee pluck it out. and cast it from thee. For it is profit- 
able for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not 
that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right 
hand offend thee cut it off and cast it from thee. For it is prof- 
itable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not 
that thy whole body should be cast into hell."— Is ■ at t. v : 27-30. 

Many have been the questions that have arisen in the minds 
of Bible readers as to the Savior's meaning in this and other 
places when he says : Pluckout the eye, cutoff the hand, cut off 
the foot and cast them from you. The passage just quoted is 
the key to all the others of like kind. This one correctly inter- 
preted and the others will not be difficult to be understood. 

The verb offend in this place and in other places where the 
Savior gives the same instructions is not used iu its popular 
sense. Popularly, to offend is to give an insult, to wound the 
feelings, to stir up a man's anger. But a man's right eye could 
hardly be guilty of offering an insult to its owner. Nor could 
his hand or his foot do such a thing. The noun offense in this 
class of passages comes from skandalon in the original, and is 
defined, in the classics, to mean, "A trap, a snare ; a stumbling 



SELF-CONTROL. 121 

block, a cause of offense. The verb offend, in these same Scrip- 
tures, is from skandalizo in the Greek, and is defined to mean, 
" To cause to stumble ; hence, to cause to sin, to be an occasion 
of sinning, to induce to sin." Bagster defines skandalizo to 
mean, primarily, si To cause to stumble ; " metonymically, u To 
offend, vex, shock, excite feelings of repugnance." 

It is quite clear that the eye, the hand, the foot, or the appe- 
tites, could only perform the acts expressed by this verb in its 
primary sense. It is not used in these texts in its metonymic, 
but in its primary and most natural signification. 

Now, let us take up these texts one at a time and endeavor to 
reach their true exegesis. " If thy right eye oflend thee " rend- 
ered, If thy right eye cause thee to sin, would, in English, 
exactly express the Master's meaning. This accords with the 
context. The Lord had just said, " That whosoever looketh on 
a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her 
in his heart." The eye in that case is the outward vebicle 
through which the heart-sin is committed. It is the snare by 
which the soul is entrapped into a grievous fault. The sin in 
this case is wholly subjective. It pertains to the inner man, but 
the eye is the objective organ by which the soul is ensnared into 
a heinous sin. Though the sin affects only the soul of the sin- 
ner himself, and is shut up in the confines of his ownheart ; still 
without the instrumentality of the outward eye the monstrous 
sin could not and would not have been committed. 

The Savior expresses his abhorrence of the flagrant sin by 
hurling at the eye, the visible cause of the secret sin, the terrible 
denunciation : Pluck out [the right eye. " Cast it from thee." 
In pronouncing the penalty, the Savior strikes at the objective 
sinner, the one that is in sight, the one that affords the occasion 
of the wrong, the one that led the soul into the monstrous de- 
pravity. 

The duty of self-control is the underlying thought here. It 
is clearly made the Christian's duty to govern himself even to 
the restraining of the eye from looking upon any thing that will 
excite impure thoughts in the heart, or that will arouse slum- 
bering passions into active play, or set the appetites and lustful 
desires on fire, and thus lead the soul into the whirlpool of vice. 
A man's duty, in this matter, is so important that he must dis- 
charge it even to the plucking out of a right eye, or cutting off 



122 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

a right hand or a right foot. The law of Christ is imperative, 
is urgent, is vehement at this point. The lustful appetites must 
be kept in subjection to a heart that has been purified by faith 
in Christ, and a will that is sanctified by the Spirit of God. 
This must be done at all hazards. The case is so urgent and it 
is so vital that it must be done, even if it cost the right eye, the 
right hand or the right foot. The duty is so important that its 
neglect costs the loss of the whole man, casts his " whole 
body " " into hell." It is a fearful thing for a professed Chris- 
tian to trifle with his lusts and appetites. If he allows them to 
have the mastery they will drag him down to hell in the end. 
He must take the reins into his hands and keep all the propen- 
sities of the flesh in proper bounds, or Satan will receive him as 
his own, and, with his Satanic majesty, he will be finally cast 
into the " bottomless pit " to remain forever. O ! what eternal 
consequences are involved in this matter! No less than the 
happiness and bliss of the heavenly world, or, the horrors of an 
endless hell are suspended upon the discharge or the neglect of 
this Christian obligation. 

In principle, the Savior's lesson here applies with equal force 
to any other sin, into which the fleshly lusts would or could 
lead the soul, as to the one mentioned in the text. It applies 
with the same aptness to any other bodily member or propen- 
sity, as to the eye, the hand or the foot. A specific sin and spe- 
cific fleshly members are used to teach a general lesson. That 
general lesson is the importance, the transcendent importance, 
the imperious necessity of self government. Have we, brethren 
and sisters, all learned that important lesson? Are we practic- 
ing it in our daily lives? Have we all our members, bodily, un- 
der control? Or have we surrendered ourselves slaves to any 
one of our fleshly lusts? Dear brethren: "Know ye not, that 
to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey his servants ye 
are to whom ye obey ; whether of sin unto death, or of obedi- 
ence unto righteousness ? " Are any of us the servants of any 
one of our appetites? We are if we are living in obedience to 
their demands. The man who has allowed his love of strong 
drink to become his master is a good illustration of a servant, 
or indeed a slave to his own appetites, made so by his yielding 
himself to obey the demands of the flesh. The opium eater 
does the same thing. He is in the shackles of a most galling 



SELF-CONTROL. 123 

bondage to his own depraved and debased appetite. Is not the 
man who can not, at all, do without his cigar, or his pipe, or a 
quid in his mouth also a servant to his appetites ? Has he not 
yielded himself to the cravings and gnawings of an appetite ? 
The service may be very greatly less injurious and less objec- 
tionable than that yielded to the wine cup, still the question re- 
mains : Is the man free, free as the Lord's child ought to be ? 
Is the man free, when he can not quit ? The man who has so 
yielded to the love of money so far that he can not give to the 
poor, can not give to the Lord, can not give for the spread of 
the gospel, has become a servant to covetousness. His soul is 
the slave of a most tyrannical master. The love of money 
reigns in his soul and he serves, whereas, he ought, himself, to 
reign, and this propensity ought to serve. You may say that 
the stingy man can give but will not. Let it be repeated he can 
not give acceptably. When he does give, it is painful to him. 
When he parts with a few glittering coins it hurts him. If he 
be really free from the tyrannical love of money, giving affords 
him a pleasure. He delights in it. He loves to give. But 
whenever giving is painful, then know that the man is under 
the yoke of covetousness and not free. 

In all these cases, and many others like them, it is the Chris- 
tian's duty to declare war upon these passions and lusts, and to 
wage that warfare unrelentingly and to the bitter end. Let it 
be a war of conquest. Never make a compromise nor a treaty 
of peace. Conquer a peace by an entire subjugation of the ap- 
petites. If success is hard to obtain, fight all the more valiantly. 
If the means of success are so costly as the loss of the right eye 
let the sacrifice not be withheld. Overcome, whatever may be 
the cost. You can not afford to be defeated. Slavery to the 
appetites, in this life, will drag you down into bondage in the 
eternal ages of the future. 

Next we consider the question, whether the command to 
pluck out the right eye, to cut off the right hand or foot is to be 
taken literally ? "Whether any man is under obligation to lit- 
erally pluck out the fleshly eye, or cut off the fleshly hand or 
foot ? Strict or true loyalty to God and his word requires that, 
if the words are to be taken in their literal meaning. That is, 
faithfulness and genuine loyalty to the great King require that 
at our hands, it that be the King's meaning and intention at 



124 THE MOBEKLY PULPIT. 

the different times when he used the words. We must not stag- 
ger at the words of the Lord nor stumble at his commands be- 
cause they look hard to us. Abraham staggered not when 
commanded to offer his son. The putting out of an eye, though 
terrible to contemplate, is less fearml than to slay an only, well 
beloved son. Besides, God actually gave his only begotten and 
His well beloved Son to be put to a most shameful and excruci- 
ating death for our sakes. We have no right to complain, if :»n 
an emergency He should call for an eye or a hand or a foot. 

But the Savior never intended that we should, any of us, put 
out an eye or cut off a hand literally. The apostles understood 
him correctly and taught the brethren the same lesson that 
Jesus had taught them. But we find no trace of a literal appli- 
cation of these words in their teachings. But the duty of self- 
control is reiterated by them forcibly enough. Dr. Barnes, com- 
menting on this Scripture, says : "The Hebrews, like others, 
were accustomed to represent the affections of the mind by the 
members or parts of the body." He adds: "Thus the bowels, 
denoted compassion; the heart, affection or feeling; the reins, 
understanding, secret purpose. An evil eye denotes sometimes 
envy (Matt, xv: 15), sometimes an evil passion or sin in general 
(Mark vii: 21, 22), • out of the heart proceedeth an evil eye.' In 
this place," that is, in Matt, v: 29, "as in 2 Peter ii: 14, it is used 
to denote strong adulterous passions, unlawful desire and in- 
clination. The right eye and hand are mentioned, because 
they are of most use to us, and denote that, however 6trong the 
passion may be, or difficult to part with, yet that we should do it." 

This quotation, from Dr. Barnes, presents the matter in its 
true light. The members of the body are made to represent 
the passions. In this Scripture, as the Doctor says, the eye "Is 
used to denote strong adulterous passion, unlawful desire." 
But "unlawful desire" ought to be killed. But when "unlaw- 
ful desire" is represented by the right eye, the Savior says: 
"Pluck it out," meaning thereby to uproot and dislodge the 
unlawful desire from the heart, and thus prevent the sin that 
would be committed if that " unlawful desire " be permitted to 
live in the heart. Let it be plucked out and cast away. 

This explanation of the plucking out an eye and the cutting off 
a hand or a foot is the correct one for Matt, xviii: 8, 9, and Mark 
ix : 43, where the same^ideas are expressed. The explanation, 



SELF-CONTROL. 125 

already given the word offense, from the Greek word skandalon 
and the verb offend from skandalizo is the proper one for both 
these passages. 

This view of these passages harmonizes well with the subse- 
quent teachings of the inspired apostles. Paul says : " There- 
fore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the 
flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die : but if ye, 
through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall 
live." Kom. viii: 12, 13. The word mortify, in this place, is 
from thanatoo, in the original, and that means, literally, in the 
Greek: "To put to death, deliver to death." This is quite as 
pointed and quite as severe as the Lord's precept, to pluck out 
the eye. Paul makes it a condition of life, that the Christian 
shall put the deeds of the flesh to death. The deeds of the 
flesh, to be so severely dealt with, are the improper indulgence 
of the passions. When the eye represents one of these, the 
Savior says : " Pluck it out." When Paul speaks of the thing 
itself, he says : Put it to death, kill it. The two teachers, Christ 
and Paul, are substantially harmonious. Obedience in the 
former case was to result in entering into life, and in the latter, 
" ye shall live." Disobedience in the former case, in its results, 
casts the "whole body into hell." In the latter, the disobedi- 
ent one "shall die." Paul then is parallel with Christ in his 
teachings on the subject of self-control. 

But Paul goes further and tells us how the work is to be done. 
"If ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the flesh," 
expresses the method of killing the lustful fleshly deeds. The 
Christian does the work himself. He must not depend on 
another to do the work for him. It will not be done at all if 
he waits for another. But he does it "through the Spirit." 
The act of mortifying the flesh is his own act, but he has the 
help of the Spirit. He does not overcome the flesh by his own 
power only. If he depends on himself he will fail. But when 
in humility and in full assurance of faith, he struggles with the 
flesh, the Spirit aids him and strengthens him for the conflict. 
In that sense the Spirit gives him the victory. There is no 
mistaking what Spirit it is through which the deeds of the flesh 
are mortified, for Paul immediately adds: "For as mauy as are 
led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." It is the 

i 



126 THE MOBERIiY PULPIT. 

Spirit of God, then, through which the man of God gains the 
victory over the flesh. 

Again, the lesson of self-government is urged in strong lan- 
guage by Paul, as follows : " Mortify therefore your members 
which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleannees, inordinate 
affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness which is idol- 
atry : for which things sake, the wrath of God cometh on the 
children of disobedience." Col. iii : 5. 6. 

Here the word mortify comes from the Greek verb nekroo 
and it is defined : " To put to death, kill." This is parallel with 
the words of Jesus, when he says pluck out the eye. He speaks 
of the bodily organs representing the depraved passions, and 
Paul does the same thing in the use of the word members, 
which here comes from the Greek word melos, defined: "A 
member, link, any part of the body." But he does not mean 
that the Colossians should kill their bodily parts, for he goes 
on and specifies what he means by members, what particular 
members he would have killed. The first one is fornication. 
"Why kill it? Because it is the unlawful indulgence, the base 
prostitution, the abnormal use of one of the natural animal pas- 
sions. It is this perverted abnormal condition, and 6inful use 
of the natural appetite that Paul peremptorily commands to 
have killed. It is simply a question of life and death. The man, 
who in obedience to the apostolic precept, puts to death these 
unlawful, sinful members, will thereby be enabled to live for- 
ever, but the man who, failing in this, allows the baser lusts to 
rule him, and reign in his soul, will have to die the second death, 
which is to be cast " Into the lake of fire and brimstone." The 
case is urgent. The battle must be fought and the victory won. 

He who will take the trouble to carefully examine will find 
that uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, mem- 
bers that Paul would have put to death, are of like kind with 
fornication, and the same exegesis applies to each of them. 
They are unpopular sins. They hide from the public gaze. 

But there is another member, another perverted natural ap- 
petite, that Paul would have killed. It is covetousness. Cov- 
etousness is from pleonexia in the original. It is defined to be 
"An inordinate desire of riches, covetousness." We have, in 
our day, strangely changed the standard of morals from the 
New Testament standard. A covetous, rich man is considered 



SELF-CONTROIi. 127 

respectable in this country, simply because he is rich. A rich, 
covetous man who dodges the assessor and exacts the highest 
possible rate of interest, and seizes the poor man's home under 
a " cut- throat mortgage," at one-half its value, and often less, is 
tolerated and petted in the church. He is, even too frequently, 
honored with official position in the church. But if a poor, silly 
girl is coaxed to attend a dance, out she goes, out of the church, 
often condemned by a money-loving church official whose sin 
of covetousness is a hundred fold more despicable in the eyes 
of God than hers. Her sin is a sin, it is true, a mote in the eye, 
but his is a huge beam. 

Covetousness screens itself behind the law. Covetous men 
boast of their justice and twit their poor brethren with the 
boast that they pay all their just debts. How much right has 
a man to boast of doing that which he could not avoid ? These 
men are honest only in the eye of the law of human enactment. 
The law of the land tolerates many things that the law of the 
Lord does not. There is no State law against stinginess, but 
the law of God is terribly severe against it. In God's eye it is 
a capital crime. Paul says to kill it. 

There is an old proverb that says : " Show me the company a 
man keeps and I will tell you what kind of a man he is." There 
is much truth and good sense in this proverb. In like manner 
show me the kind of company the Lord assigns to a given sin, 
and I will show you what the Lord thinks of that particular 
sin. Now let us look at the groups of sins in which the Lord 
places the sin of covetousness : 

Group 1. " Adulteries, lornications, murders, thefts, covet- 
ousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blas- 
phemy, pride, foolishness." Mark vii : 21, 22. 

Group 2. " Unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covet- 
ousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, hate, deceit, ma- 
lignity, whisperers, back-biters, haters of God, despiteful, 
proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to par- 
ents, without understanding, covenant breakers, implacable, 
unmerciful." Rom. i : 29-31. 

GroupS. "Who being past feeling, have given themselves 
over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greedi- 
ness." Eph. iv. : 19. Here greediness comes from pleonexia, 
the word rendered covetousness in the other groups. It might 



128 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

as well have been rendered covetousness here as anywhere 
else, though greediness is a good rendering, being very nearly 
a synonym of covetousness. The phrase, " To work all unclean- 
ness with greediness," is in the Greek more pointed still; "with 
greediness " coming from enpleonexia, in covetousness. Some 
men's very souls are baptized, immersed in covetous greed. 
Such a man soon learns to disregard the rights of others. He 
will, when he has the opportunity, appropriate to his own use 
another man's property, another man's earnings, another man's 
good name, another man's wife, or any thing else that belongs 
to another. That is the way that " all uncleanness " is wrought 
in greediness. When a man becomes thoroughly covetous, 
there is almost no limit to the depths of iniquity into which he 
is liable to sink. His unmitigated selfishness renders him blind 
to the rights, feelings and wants of others. He can only [see 
that which will contribute to his own selfish greed. 

Group 4. " But fornication and all uncleanness, or covetous- 
ness, let it not be once named amongst you, as becometh 
saints: neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which 
are not convenient : but rather giving of thanks. For this ye 
know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous 
man who is an idolator. hath any inheritance in the kingdom of 
Christ, and of God." Eph. v. : 3-5. 

Now let us look at the company that covetousness keeps. 
In group 1 we find it in companionship with adulteries, fornica- 
tions, murders, thelts, lasciviousness and blasphemy. In group 
2 we find it in the company of all unrighteousness, fornication, 
maliciousness, envy, murder, deceit, back-bitings and hating 
God. In group 3 we find it associated with lasciviousness and 
all uncleanness, and in group 4 with fornication, uncleanness, 
and filthiness, and the covetous man is found in the com- 
pany of whoremongers, and declared to be an idolator. This 
is an awfully black list. These are terrible and shameful sins. 
But this is the class to which God assigns covetousness. How- 
ever much we, in violation of Scripture, may tolerate and ex- 
cuse the sin of covetousness, God puts it on an equality with 
these sins. In God's eye it is not a whit better than they. He 
puts them all down in the same category. They are also in the 
same predicament. For Paul says : " That no whoremonger, 
nor unclean person, nor covetous man hath any inheritance in 
h e kingdom of Christ and of God." 



SELF-CONTROL. 129 

The predicament is the same. The covetous man is declared 
to have no inheritance in the kingdom of God. Think of 
that, stingy church member! You have no interest, no inher- 
itance in Christ. Are there not many, nominally in the church, 
who by their small giving, by their giving grudgingly, and by 
their not giving at all, that have cut themselves off from all 
share in the blessings of Christ? Do they not belong to that 
unhappy, numerous class of self-deceived ones, who, at the 
judgment of that great day, will say: "Lord, Lord, have we 
not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name cast out devils, 
and in thy name done many wonderful works ?" This class 
will be rejected and turned away, for Jesus says : "Then will 1 
profess unto them, I never knew you : depart from me, ye that 
work iniquity." The reason assigned by the Savior for rejec- 
tion in one class is that they had not done any works of benev- 
olence, or what amounts to the same thing, they had been 
stingy. See and study the close of Matt. xxv. 

Covetousness will exclude a man, though he be in the church 
here, from the everlasting kingdom. Paul says that covetous- 
ness is idolatry, and that a covetous man is an idolater. He 
allows the insatiable greed for money to usurp the Lord's 
place in his heart. Of course he can not go to heaven. 

Brethren, let us heed the apostolic admonition. Let us be 
sure that we both learn and practice self-control. Let us be 
sure that we be not idolaters in being covetous and stingy. 
Let us rather be liberal givers, cheerful givers, that we may be 
loved of the Lord, and have inheritance in the kingdom of 
God. Let us resolve that with the Lord's help we will be mas- 
ters, we will keep in subjection the body, with all its passions 
and its lusts. Let us resolve that from this day forever we w ill 
not be covetous, we will not allow stinginess a place in our 
hearts. 

Now, dear friends, we turn to you. You who have not yet 
entered upon this warfare upon the lusts and passions. We in- 
vite you to-day, to come and enlist under the banner of the 
cross, and enroll yourselves in the Lord's army. If you will 
confess and obey him, he will forgive all your past sins and 
give you the Holy Spirit. He will help you to overcome your 
passions, control yourselves. If you will control self and be 



130 



THE MOBEKLY PULPIT. 



faithful to Him until death, He will help you to cross the dark 
river in safety. He wil 1 give you a crown of glory and a man- 
sion in the Father's house. While the brethren sing : 

"Am I a soldier of the cross," 

we invite you in his name to come. 




SERMON X, 

EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT 

Preached Lord's Day, Oct. 10, 1880. 



Texts: " Where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. " 

— Jesus. 

HADES. 

" The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." — Jesus. 

" In hell he lifted up his eyes, heing in torments."— Jesus. 

■" Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell "—David. 

•* His soul was not left in hell." — Peter. 

"And have the keys of hell and of death." — John. 

"And hell followed with him. — John. 

«' Death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them."— John. 

"Death and hell were cast into the lake of fire"— John. 
GEBENNA. 

" Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall he in danger of hell fire."— 
Jesus. 

" It is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and 
not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." — Jesus. 

"Fear him who i 5 * able to destroy both soul and body in hell." — Jesus. 

"How can ye escape the damnation of hell."— Jesus. 

My Dear Brethren and Sisters : 

Our theme to-day is "everlasting punishment." It is ex- 
pressed in the exact words of the Master, as rendered in the 
common version of the English Scriptures. The correct under- 
standing of any Scripture is important. It is an important 
part of the Christian life to study the word of God. Paul tells 
the Colossians to make th> mselves familiar with the divine 
word in the following language: "Let the word of Christ 
dwell in you richly in all wisdom." Col. iii : 16. " The word 
of Christ" does not dwell richly in any one who is ignorant of 
that word. The apostle's command involves the careful study 
of the word of God. If for no other reason, it is our duty to 
study the Scriptures which treat of future punishment, that we 
may have a correct understanding of Christ's words Further, 
it is important because our present Christian life, in purity ot 

131 



182 THE MOBERLY PUEPIT. 

morals, and in practical piety, can not rise higher than our 
knowledge of the teachings of the divine Book. Our every 
day life may fall below our knowledge of the Scriptures, but it 
can never rise higher than that. The more thoroughly we 
understand God's own Book, the higher we may rise in the 
scale of moral being. 

We now proceed to quote our first text in full : " And who- 
soever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it 
is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, 
and he were cast into the sea. And if thy hand offend thee, 
cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed than, 
having two hands, to go into hell, into the fire that never shall 
be quenched ; where their worm dieth not. and the fire is not 
quenched. And if thy foot offend thee cut it off : it is better 
for thee to enter halt into life than, having two feet, to be cast 
into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched ; where their 
worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye 
offend thee, pluck it out : it is better for thee to enter into the 
kingdom of God with one eye than, having two eyes, to be cast 
into hell fire ; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not 
quenched." Mark ix: 42-48. 

In our discourse on '' Self-Control " we sufficiently discussed 
the cutting off of hand and foot, and the plucking out an eye. 
But we now proceed to inquire into the Savior's meaning when 
he talks about " the fire that never shall be quenched," and the 
"worm" that u dieth not." It i-i well to observe here that 
casting into hell, in this place, stands in antithesis to entering 
into life, or entering into the kingdom of God. Jesus is not 
teachiDg sinners how to become Christians. He nowhere does 
this. That work he assigned to the apostles. They did it. He 
is teaching his disciples the important lesson of self-govern- 
ment. He gives, as the sure result of compliance with his 
teachings, that they would " enter into life," but if they did 
not comply with his instructions, that they would "be cast into 
hell." We saw very plainly in our last discourse that the duty 
of self-government is a lifetime business with every disciple of 
Christ, and it is quite clear that the reward of that lifetime 
obedience will be entered upon when this earth-life is ended. 
Eternal life is surely the reward that will be given to the faith- 
ful disciple. But, in our text, being " cast into hell, into the 



EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. 133 

fire that never shall be quenched," is the penalty of unfaithful- 
ness, and stands in antithesis to this eternal life. Then, if the 
life into which the faithful ones enter is never to end, neither 
will the state of punishment into which the unfaithful ones 
enter ever terminate. 

We now raise the questions, following: What is the mean- 
ing of hell ? What is meant by the "worm " that " dieth not ? " 
What is the meaning of "the fire" that "is not quenched"? 
These questions, correctly answered, we need not have any 
difficulty in understanding our whole text. 

I. What is the Meaning of Heel? The word often occurs 
in the Bible, in both Old Testament and New. In the common 
version it comes from two different words in the New Testa- 
ment Greek. It comes from hades ten times. The best way 
to get at the meaning of the word hell, in the Scriptures, is 
first to get the meaning of the word in the original whence it 
comes, and then study the passage in which it occurs in its 
connection. It comes from geenna, popularly spelled gehenna, 
twelve times. In studying the meaning of the word in any 
particular passage, it is quite important to know from which of 
these two words in the original it comes. Hades in the Greek 
is a compound word, made up of a {alpha) and idein. Idein 
means to see. But the prefix a (alpha) negatives, exactly 
reverses the meaning, so that hades means, literally, the 
unseen. The unseen state, the unseen world, the invisible 
world, would be good renderings of the word. It is defined 
by Pickering: "The infernal regions, hell, death; place or 
state of the dead; Pluto; melas hades, gloomy Pluto." Pluto 
was the god of the lower regions. The Greeks believed him to 
live and reign in the invisible world. Their conception of that 
world was that it was continually dark, always gloomy. They 
applied the name of the place to the god himself, calling him 
melas hades, meaning dark Pluto. It is quite clear, then, that 
the classic use of the word applies to the state of the dead, to 
that state or condition of humanity that is invisible to the eyes 
of flesh. 

Bagster defines it in his Lexicon to the Greek New Testa- 
ment, to mean : ■' The invisible abode or mansion of the dead ; 
the place of punishment ; hell ; the lowest place or condition." 

It is perfectly certain that, in the light of these definitions, 



134 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

any punishment or any reward pertaining to that state will be 
suffered or enjoyed, as the case may be, after death. N©ne of 
the ills suffered in hades are this side the grave. The punish- 
ments or the rewards to be had in that state are, to the life that 
now is, future. The Universalist's idea that a sinner gets all 
his punishment " as he goes along," gets it in this life, is sadly 
out of joint with the Scriptures where the word hades occurs. 
Let us examine them. They will, every one of them, show the 
definitions given to be strictly correct. The first one is : " Thou 
Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought 
down to hell." Matt, xi: 23. Hades is here in antithesis to 
ouranon, heaven. Both are used figuratively, but hades is 
true to its primary meaning. Capernaum, with all its advan- 
tages, has disappeared from human sight. Its very site is no 
longer known. The parallel passage in Luke x : 15, is just like 
it. "Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of 
hell shall not prevail against it." Matt, xvi : 18. Here again 
hades represents the unseen, the abode of the dead where 
Satan, at the time of this utterance, ruled supreme, holding 
humanity bound in the dominion of death. The object of 
building the church was to inaugurate a war upon the dark, 
gloomy dominion of death. Satan has his seat in hades. His 
will and his counsels are, and were, to hold humanity in the 
unseen estate. But Christ, by building his church, by setting 
on foot the scheme of redemption, intended to raise every man 
from the dead. Then hades will be thoroughly conquered. 
Jesus promised all this when he said: "The gates of hell 
{hades) shall not prevail against it." 

Again. "In hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments/* 
Luke xvi: 23. Here we find "torments" in hades. This pun- 
ishment is after death, for it is expressly stated by the Lord 
himself that " the rich man also died and was buried." These 
"torments" were, beyond all doubt, subsequent to the man's 
death and burial. This surely establishes the fact that there is 
punishment after death. It seems that it would take an infidel 
and a blasphemer to say that " all the punishment a man gets 
for his wicked deeds is meted out to him in the misfortunes of 
the present life." Some men, who oppose the doctrine of 
1 everlasting punishment" because it is opposed to their own 
sinful lives, tell us that, "the worst hell a man has to endure 



EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. 135 

consists in the goadings of his own guilty conscience." It is to 
be feared that these men are willingly ignorant of the Scriptures. 
They forget, or rather, never knew, that the practice of sin ren- 
ders the conscience finally insensible. If the twinges of a guilty 
conscience are the only punishment of sin, or the chief punish- 
ment of sin, then the greater the sinner the less the punishment. 
The first oath sworn by a boy troubles his conscience more than 
a thousand oaths after he has become a hardened swearer. The 
older the sinner, and the longer the sin is practiced, and the 
oftener repeated, the lighter the punishment. But it was not 
so in the case of the "rich man." As long as he lived, he " was 
clothed in purple and fine linen, and tared sumptuously every 
day." But after he "died and was buried," he was subjected 
to "torments." The simple fact of punishment after death is 
most unmistakably taught here. " Thou wilt not leave my soul 
in hell." Acts ii : 27. " His soul was not left in hell." Acts ii : 
81. In both these quotations hell is King James' rendering of 
hades. The first one of these passages is quoted by the apostle 
Peter from David iu Psalm xvi : 10. There David, as a prophet, 
foretells the resurrection of Christ from the dead. He said: 
" Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell ; neither wilt thou suffer 
thine Holy One to see corruption." Peter, in this verse, makes 
an exact quotation from the Septuagint. David is here fore- 
telling the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Verses 26, 27, 
28 of Acts ii are quoted in the Greek Testament, verbatim, by 
Peter on Pentecost day, from the 9, 10, and 11 verses of the xvi 
Psalm in the Septuagint. Peter made this quotation under the 
inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is indorsement enough 
of the correctness of the Septuagint in that passage, and it 
affords a fine illustration of the use of the word hades. When 
Jesus died his body went to the grave in the eaith, and his soul 
went into hades. His soul was not left in hades, and hi 6 flesh 
did not see corruption ; that is, it did not undergo decomposi- 
tion in the grave. His soul, at the resurrection, came out of 
hades, and his flesh, the body, came out of the earth. 

"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy vic- 
tory?" 1 Cor. xv : 55. In this verse hades is rendered grave. 
This is the only instance in which it is so rendered in the com- 
mon version. While the word grave does no very serious 



136 THE MOBEELY PULPIT. 

violence to Paul's meaning, it would have been better to have 
rendered hades, unseen world. 

"I am he that liveth and was dead; and behold, I am alive 
forever more, amen ; and have the keys of hell and of death." 
Rev. i : 18. Here again, hades is translated hell. The unseen 
world would have been far better. The risen, living Savior 
simply asserts his power over both death and the unseen world. 
He has felt the pangs of the one and overcome it, and has gone 
into the other and come out of it. Under the symbol of keys 
he claims the right and the power to loose the pains of death 
and unlock tbe prison house of death, and bring every man out 
of the unseen world. Translating hades by the word hell in 
this place was a mistake. It has given unprincipled cavilers an 
opportunity to deceive the unlearned by telling them that hell 
would come to an end. The state of the dead will terminate at 
the general resurrection. But hell, when it comes trom 
gehenna, is the name of a state or condition of things beyond 
the resurrection. 

"And I looked, and beheld a pale horse, and his name that sat 
on him was Death, and hell followed with him." Rev. vi : 18. 
Here again, the word hell is King James' rendering of hades. 
In this vision John saw death personified. A man dies and his 
soul departs to tbe unseen world. The act of dying is followed 
by the soul's abode in the invisible world while it waits for the 
general resurrection. The one follows the other, as a matter of 
fact. When death is personified and rides "a pale horse," 
hades is also personified, and follows after him. In this place 
also hades ought not to have been rendered hell. Its being so 
translated has tended to confusion in the popular mind. 

"And the sea gave up the dead which were in it ; and death 
and hell delivered up the dead which were in them ; and they 
were judged, every man according to their works ; and death 
and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second 
death," Rev. xx: 13, 14. In both these verses hell comes 
from hades. Death and hell are personified in both these 
verses. {So is the sea, in verse 13. They are represented as 
living, acting agpncies, surrendering their victims and their 
power. This is simply foretelling the general resurrection and 
the final judgment in prophetic symbols. Death and hell 



EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. 137 

{hades) are made to personate the wicked, that they contain, in 
being '■ cast into the lake of fire." 

We have now considered all the passages in the New Testa- 
ment in which the word hades occurs, and it is perfectly clear 
that it is the name given to the abode of the departed spirits 
after death, and previous to the resurrection from the dead. 
While the bodies of men rest in the earth, their souls abide in 
hades. While there is happiness in hades for the souls of the 
righteous, and anguish for the souls of ihe wicked, it is not the 
final abode of the righteous nor of the wicked. Beyond the 
unseen world, hades, the children of God will go into heaven, 
and the children of the Devil into hell, gehenna. If hades had 
been uniformly translated, unseen world, and gehenna, hell, it 
would have saved much confusion and unprofitable debate. 

But before leaving this passage let us take another careful 
look at it. Casting " into the lake of fire " is positively said to 
be "the second death." This is said in immediate connection 
with the fact of the resurrection, and is called "the second 
death " in contradistinction to the death from which all the 
dead, John, in vision, had just seen rise up. In that vision 
John saw "a great white throne." He saw "the dead, small 
and great, stand before God." He saw the books opened. He 
saw the book of life opened. He saw the dead delivered up 
and judged. He saw them standing alive. He saw all whose 
names were " not found written in the book of life " die " the 
second death." "And whosoever was not found written in the 
book of life was cast into the lake of fire." Verse 15. " This is 
the second death." Now, one of two things is true : either 
John tells a falsehood, or all the wicked who reject Christ, 
"who know not God and obey not the gospel," are going to be 
"cast into the lake of fire," are going to die again, after the 
resurrection. This second death is an eternal separation from 
God, and is the eternal penalty due an unbelieving, unrepent- 
ant, unregenerate sinner. From it there is no escape unless it 
can be shown that God has made provision for a deliverance 
from "the second death." Let him who denies the eternity of 
the punishment of the wicked find authority for such deliver- 
ance if he can I 

We next proceed to examine the passages in which, in the 
New Testament, the word hell comes from gehenna. Remember 



138 THE MOBEKLY PULPIT. 

that we are still answering the question : What is the meaning 
of hell f 

" But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother 
without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and who- 
soever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the 
council ; but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger 
of hell fire. ' Matt, v : 22. Gehenna was the name given to a 
place near Jerusalem where the most horrid idolatrous worship 
was practiced thousands of years ago. Because the word was 
applied to that place of bad notoriety, those who seek to evade 
the force of this and other texts that speak of the penalties due 
to sin, vainly endeavor to make the word apply only to that 
spot of ground where some of the darkest deeds of earth have 
been done. Listen to the true history of the place, as given by 
the best authority : 

" The word gehenna, commonly translated hell, is made up of 
two Hebrew words, and signifies the valley of Hinnom. This 
was formerly a pleasant valley, near to Jerusalem, on the south. 
A small brook, or torrent usually ran through this valley, and 
partly encompassed the city. This valley the idolatrous Israel- 
ites devoted formerly to the horrid worship of Moloch. 2 
Kingsxvi: 3; 2 Chron. xxviii : 3. In that worship, the ancient 
Jewish writers inform us that the idol of Moloch was of brass, 
adorned with a royal crown, having the head of a calf, and his 
arms extended as if to embrace any one. When they offered 
children to him they heated the statue within by a great fire, 
and when it was burning hot, they put the miserable child into 
his arms, where it was soon consumed by the heat; and, in 
order that the cries of the child might not be heard, they made 
a great noise with drums and other instruments about the idol. 
These drums were called Toph; and hence a common name of 
the place was Tophet. Jer. vii : 31, 32." — Barnes. 

This is the history of the place in the days of the idolatrous 
kings of Judah. King Ahaz offered his own offspring to Mol- 
och there, more than seven hundred years before the Christian 
era. King Manasseh offered his children there sometime during 
his long reign, which closed about six hundred and forty years 
before Christ. The place was polluted by King Jopiah during 
his reign, which closed six hundred and ten years before Christ. 
The abominable idolatries were never resumed there after that. 



EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. 139 

In a short time the Jews were carried captive to Babylon, where 
they remained seventy years. After that they never practiced 
idolatry. For more than six centuries these horrid rites had 
been discontinued before Christ gave utterance to the language 
under consideration. The place had long since ceased to be 
used for burning human sacrifices. But it was horribly unclean 
to a Jew ever since Josiah's day. Its name had been used to 
denote the place of final punishment for devils and wicked 
men. Thus the Savior uses it in the language now under con- 
sideration. 

The Lord here speaks of three grades of crime, and three 
penalties, and three courts. The courts are, first, the judg- 
ment ; second, the council ; the third is not named, but the 
penalty is, it is " hell fire." The first tribunal is, in the original, 
krisis, here rendered judgment; the second is sunedrion, here 
rendered council ; the third penalty is the Gehenna of fire, or, 
as rendered here, " hell fire." The three crimes are : First, 
being " angry with his brother without a cause ; " the second is 
to "say to his brother Raca," or Raka; the third is to say 
" Thou fool," to say More. Raka is a word of great contempt, 
but More (pronounced with two syllables, thus, Mo-re.) was the 
very meanest epithet that brother could apply to brother. Jesus, 
in the preceding verse, had just said : " Ye have heard that it 
was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill ; and whoso- 
ever shall kill, shall be in danger of the judgment," of the krisis. 
This was the lower court that sat in each one of the cities of 
Israel. It had the authority to inflict the death penalty on 
murderers. But, being the lower court, the more difficult and 
important cases were carried up to the council, the sunedrion. 
This was the Jewish Sanhedrim, the supreme court of the Jew- 
ish nation. From its decisions there was no appeal. 

Jesus is now, in that " Sermon on the Mount," promulgating 
his new and " higher law." Under the reign of Christ to desire 
to commit a wrong deed is equally sinful, so far as the man who 
entertains the impure and unholy desire is concerned, as if the 
deed were actually perpetrated. Thus, under the old law, the 
man who killed was "in danger of the judgment," the krisis; 
but under Christ, the man who indulges malicious hate, who 
only desires to kill, is "in danger of the judgment," the krisis. 
So, Christ puts the man who has murderous hate in his heart 



140 THE MOBERJLY PULPIT. 

on the same plane, precisely, where the old law put the man 
who actually spilled his brother's blood. But the man who 
embodies that murderous hate that he is nursing in his heart 
in the utterauce of the contemptuous word Raka, is a greater 
sinner, and is "in danger of the council," the sunedrion, the 
Sanhedrim, the highest earthly court acknowledged by a Jew. 
But the man who formulates the vindictive malice in his heart 
in the word More is a greater sinner still. Neither the judg- 
ment, Jcrisis, nor the council, sunedrion, Sanhedrim, is compe- 
tent to take cognizance of his case. His offense is beyond their 
jurisdiction. He is amenable to the court that has power to 
cast into hell. He is " in danger of hell fire," a penalty that no 
earthly court can inflict. None but the Supreme Court of the 
universe has jurisdiction in his case. The penalty is too awful 
to be entrusted to any court where there is the least possibility 
of mistake. 

Did Jesus here mean to say that the man who said More to 
his brother was in danger of being burnt bodily in the literal 
valley just south of Jerusalem? We answer no, for the follow- 
ing reasons : 

1. There is no proof that there was at that time any fires 
kindled in the valley at all. The fires that made the place 
notorious had been extinguished for more than six hundred 
years. 

2. No court then in existence in Judea had any authority to 
burn any human being for any offense. 

3. No one in that age was in any danger whatever of being 
cast into the fire of Gehenna, south of Jerusalem. 

4. If Jesus meant to assert that the man who said to his broth- 
er, More, was in any danger of burning in the little valley south 
of the city, he stated what was not true. Being burned literally 
was not the penalty of any offense under any law then in force in 
Judea. 

5. But Jesus is the Sou of God and never did, nor never will, 
make a false statement. The assertion that he does make, in 
this place, is strictly true. 

6. The man who says to his brother, More, Jesus pays, "Shall 
be in danger of hell fire." This is true. If not Jesus never 
would have said it. 

But we had already seen that it would not be true if he had 



^ 



I 



EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. 141 

meant to assert that the man was in danger of the fires of the 
valley of gehenno, near the city. Then the word has another 
application than that. But the word only has two significations. 
The on?, the valley where Molech was worshiped with human 
sacrifices, the other, the place of final punishment for both 
wicked men and devils. Jn this passage, the latter is meant. 
From this there can be no reasonable escape. 

The phrns- 3 , "in danger of" in this place, is the rendering 
of a single word in the Greek. It is enokos, and is rendered, in 
the Common Version, "in danger of five times, "guilty of" four 
times, and 'subject to" once. The best rendering is "subject 
to." The expression "hell fire," in this place is, in the Greek : 
cw teen gee/antou puros. We give eich ot these five words, 
for you see there are fi?e of them, instead of two as ia the 
Common Version, with its literal English meaning printed 
under it. 

Eis Uen geenan ton puros. 
into the hell of the fire. 

But whosoever shall say More, "fool, ' shall be subject to be 
cast into the hell of the fire, exactly expresses, in English, what 
the Savior said in Greek 

The man who denies thit there is a hell, into which the man 
who says More to his brother, and never repents, will be cast, 
makes Jesus a liar. He may be ignorant of what he is doing, 
but the fact stands, that, whether willfully or ignorantly, he 
makes our Lord a liar. "Let God be true, but every man a 
liar," says Paul. 

In tin 29th verse of the saom chapter that we have been con- 
sidering, and in the same discourse, the Savior says : " It is 
profi able for thee that one of thy members should perish, and 
not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." This is re- 
peated in the next verse. This language can not apply to the 
hateful valley, for the reasons already giv^n ou verse 22nd. 
There never was in Jud a any law to put auy one iuto the liter- 
al gehenna of fire bodily, and ot course no provision to excuse 
the penalty by cut ing off a hand or a foot, or plucking out an 
eye. 

In our last sermon we showed t;at the duty of subjugating 
the lusts and appetites was the thing taught in all the places 
wher i the Savior said, cut offhand or foot or pluck out an eye. 



142 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

And now we are able to see clearly that the result of cutting 
off and plucking out those sinful indulgences will be that we 
will thereby be saved, not from the gehenna here, but from the 
hell, the gehenna of the eternal world, 'this will be sufficient 
explanation of the word hell in Matt, viii : 9. 

"Fear not them who kill the borty, but are not able to kill the 
soul: but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and 
body in hell." Matt.x: 28. 

" I say uoto you my friend, be not afraid of them that kill the 
body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will 
forewarn you whom you shall fear: fear him, who after he hath 
killed, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, fear 
Him." Lukexii: 4, 5. 

These are parallel passages, the former being Matthtw's, and 
the latter Luke's account of the same utterances of the Savior. 
In both, the word hell comes from gehenna. The exegesis 
of the one is the exegesis of the other. Gehenna here does 
not and can not mean the earthly valley of such bad notoriety. 
All that ever was done, or ever could be done, ia that valley was 
to destroy the body. Man can kill the body, but that is all that 
he can do. An idolatrous king could burn the bodies of his 
victims in sacrifice to Molech, but that was all. But the Savior 
addressed these words to his disciples in view of the fact that 
they were to be persecuted, imprisoned, scourged and even put 
to death for Christ's sake. He tells them not to be afraid of 
their persecutors. His reason for not being afraid of them is 
that they can do no more than kill the body. His exhortation 
is to " Fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in 
hell." " Fear him who after he hath killed, hath power to cast 
into hell." Casting into the earthly gehenna pertained only to 
the body, and preceded death. But here is casting into a gehen- 
na after death : there is no escape here. The punishment that 
God will inflict on the impenitent sinner, and the unbelieving 
sinner, is after death. This is not all; it will affect both soul 
and body. "Fear him who is able to destroy both soul and 
body in hell" This puts it beyond the resurrection ; for after 
killing, or after death, the soul and body will be separated until 
the resurrection. But beyond the resurrection men will have 
both souls and bodies, and the gehenna of that world will re- 
ceive be th the bodies and souls of wicked men. 



EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. 143 

' Hell, then, lies beyond the final iudgment." — McGarvey. 

This Scripture completely upsets the theory that the penalty 
due to sin is all executed upon the offender in this life. It is an 
extinguisher of another human theory of modern times, popu- 
larly known as " Soul-sleeping." This theory avers that the 
soul dies with the body aud is unconscious after death, hence 
the name "Soul-sleeper." But the Lord here very pointedly 
teaches that while the persecutors of the early Christians could 
and would kill the bodies of his disciples, they could not kill 
their souls. According to Christ's words, in this place, the 
wicked Jews who stoned Stephen to death only killed his body. 
The history of the case shows beyond all question that Stephen 
himseif so understood it, for while the hard-hearted tyrants 
were stoning his body to death, he called upon God, saying : 
"Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Stephen made no mistake at 
that lime either ; for "He being full of the Holy Spirit, looked 
up into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing 
on the right hand of God." Under the inspiration of the Spirit, 
he made no false utterance, nor mistaken prayer, when he said : 
" Lord Jeeus, receive my spirit." The Master most effectually 
kills both Universalism and Materialism when he says : " Fear 
not them who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul : 
but raher fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul 
in mil." 

" Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ; for ye 
compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is 
made, ye make him two fold more the child of hell than your- 
selves." Matt, xxiii : 15 

Hell in this verse, comes from gehenna. "To be a child of 
hell, was a Hebrew phrase, signifying to be deserving of hell, to 
be awfully wicked."— Barnes. This is correct. The Lord,then, 
makes the Scribes and Pharisees "des rving of hell and their 
proselytes more so than themselves. But we have already seen 
that no body at that time was in any sense liable to the literal, 
earthly gehenna. Jesus here speaks of the hell to which wicked 
men are going after deaih and after the resurrection and the 
final judgment 

" Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers! how can ye escape the 
damnation of hell ?" Matt, xxiii : 33. 

Hell here, also, comes from gehenna. The blessed Master is 



144 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

terribly severe on the Pharisees here. He asks the question : 
" How can ye escape the damnation of hell?" as, to a Pharisee 
like those to whom he was talking, unanswerable. The mean- 
ing is, that the hypocritical Scribe3 and Pharisees could not and 
would not "escape the damnation of hell " But the Scribes and 
Pharisees were in authority in Judea and were in no danger of 
literal, earthly gehenna. But, on account of their hypocrisy 
and unbelief, they were doomed to the damnation of the hell 
that will engulf the wicked after death, after the resurrection 
and after the final judgment day. 

Once more, we quote : " The tongue is a fire, a world of iniq- 
uity : so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the 
whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature, and is set 
on fire of hell." James iii : 6. Here hell comes from gehenn a. 
What is the meaning of this Scripture ? I will answer. Eemember 
two things : 1. Jesus says that, " Out of the abundance ot the 
heart the mouth speaketh " The tongue is animated, is con- 
trolled, " Is set on fire" by the condition of the heart of its 
owner. The tongue of an angry man speaks angry words. 
The tongue of a hypocrite speaks lying words of hypocrisy. 
But all such men are doomed to hell in the end. In this place 
hell is made to represent the characters of those who are doom- 
ed to it. It is thus represented as setting the tongue on fire. 

But the literal gehenna really never did, even in a figure, set 
the tongue of its victims on fire. Its victims were little chil- 
dren offV red in sacrifice to Molech, more than six centuries be- 
fore James' day. But this was present, was going on when 
James wrote. He, too, then meant the place of punishment for 
the wicked in the eternal world. 

In answer to our first question : What does hell mean? we are 
justified in saying that when it comes irom hades it means the 
place or state of departed spirits after death and previous to the 
general resurrection and judgment, but that when it comes from 
gehenna, it means the place or state of the wicked after the 
general resurrection and judgment. 

Our discourse is already long enough. We stop just here. 

Let us, dear brethren, be very careful to continue faithful to 
the Lord that we come not finally to the awful fate of all the 
unfaithful in an eternal hell. 

And you, my friends, who are yet in your sins, who have 



EVEBLASTING PUNISHMENT. 145 

never obeyed the gospel, allow me to warn you "To flee from 
the wrath to come !" Come and obey the loving Savior to-day. 
Get ready for that awful "Day of judgment," so that you will 
not be among the unhappy number, who will call upon the 
rocks and the mountains to fall upon them and hide them from 
the face of him who now sits, and will then sit upon the throne. 
Come, confess him now. While the brethren sing: 
"Day of judgment, day of wonders," 
we earnestly plead with you to come. 



SERMON XL 

CHRISTIAN GIVING. 

Delivered before the Howard County Meeting, at Ash- 
land, Mo., May 19, 1881. 



Text.— " it is more blessed to give than to receive.''" — Jesus. 

My Dear Brethren and Sisters : 

Your candid and serious attention is asked at this time, to 
one of the most important themes pertaining to the Christian 
life. It is Christian Giving. It is eminently practical. It 
pervades the entire Christian dispensation. Christianity itself 
is a gift. Our salvation is a gift. Christ our Lord and Master 
is a gift. His shed blood that takes away our sins is a free 
gift. "We can not pay for it and can only receive it as a gifc be- 
stowed upon us by divine love. God himself is the first and 
greatest and best giver. He has given us countless blessings. 
His noblest gift is his Son whom he has given to take away our 
sins, to redeem us from the grave and to open to us the gates 
of the golden city. He has become our King, and his word is 
our law. Let us now honestly direct our attention to his word 
and see what he requires of us. In the "Sermon on the 
Mount," he said to his disciples : " Give to him that asketh thee : 
and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away." 

These words are addressed to his disciples. If we, to-day, 
are his disciples, these words are applicable to us. The duties 
here enforced are our duties. On us they are binding. "With 
all the authority of the King's command we are required to 
give. If any one of us be not a giver, he is in rebellion against 
the law of the Lord and living in sin. There is no specification 
here as to what we shall give, or to whom we shall give, or how 
146 



CHRISTIAN GIVING. 14 

much we shall give, only that we must give "to him that 
asketh." The Savior in this discourse deals with general prin- 
ciples. He simply lays down the law of his kingdom that all 
his subjects must be givers, must be benevolent, mnst be liberal, 
must not be grasping and stingy. The specifications as to when, 
to whom, how much and for what purpose we should give, we 
are not told. These are to be learned from the Savior's subse- 
quent teachings, and from the words of the apostles and the 
example of the primitive Christian^ hen they acted under the 
personal supervision of the apostles. But the law of Christ is 
here clearly laid down that Christians must be givers. To be a 
Christian, at all, a man must give. The man who does not give 
is not a true follower of Christ, however deeply and comp^tely 
he may have been immersed, and however plainly his name may 
be written on a church, paper, record. To be a practical, real 
Christian, he must imitate the character of God and follow the 
example of the Savior. He can not imitate the character of 
God without being a giver, a liberal giver. To give sparingly, 
or grudgingly, or not according to ability, is no imitation of 
God's character- To give simply to be seen of men does not at 
all imitate the divine character. He who does not give does 
not follow Je^us. While on earth Christ went about doing 
good He was a Giver on the grandest scale. He was able to 
give to each suffering one just the blessing that he needed. If 
the sufferer were sick he healed him, blind he opened his eyes, 
deaf he unstopped his ears, lame he made him rise up and walk, 
insane he clothed him in his right mind, if heart-broken he 
soothed his troubled soul with words of cheer and hope. To 
do all these things Jesus possessed unlimited power. To do 
them, our power is limited. We can not go beyond our 
ability. 

But if we, brethren, to-day, claim to be the followers of 
Christ, we ought to do all these good things so far as we have 
the ability. If our fellow man is hungry we can not feed him 
miraculously. We can not feed hungry thousands on "seven'' 
loaves and "a few small fishes," but we can feed the needy to 
the extent of our ability. There ia no need that any one of us 
feed thousands. If each one would do h s duty according to his 
ability no one would go hungry whom we ought to feed. No 
one of us can do the good deeds of Jesus on the large scale on 



148 THE MCBERLY PULPIT. 

which he did them, but we can do them in like kiud on our 
limited scale, and thus be his followers But when w e close up 
our hearts and our purses against the appeals of want and woe, 
we cease to be the followers of Christ, we are no longer hie. 
Stinginess is anti-Christian, and covetousness is idolatry. 
There is an alarming amount of idolatry even in this enlighten- 
ed nineteenth century and in free America. It does not b nd 
the knee of flesh as of old to images carved in wood or wrought 
in metals. It does not now offer human flesh and blood to 
brazen gods on fiery, smoking altars as it once did. But it does 
demand and receive the adorations and the affections of multi- 
tudes. While it does not receive the adorations and the affec- 
tions of human hearts bestowed upon the golden, or brazen, or 
wooden imagt s of gods, who are no gods, it does swallow up 
the soul's best love for golden gods wrought into the form of 
dollars, and silver gods wrought into the form of dollars and 
dimes, for paper gods wrought into the form ot bank bills, 
greenbacks, government bonds and certificates of stock. 

Money is a good thing, a most excellent thing, when not 
prostituted to improper uses. The golden image, that Nebu- 
chadnezzar, the king, set up, wa* a harmless thing of itself. 
But the king claimed for it the affections and adorations of the 
people. The golden image of Nebuchadnezzar would have 
done little harm if the hearts of the people had never been be- 
stowed upon it. The very best interests of men are subserved 
by their loving God with all their hearts, loving hi n supreme- 
ly. But the very moment a man begins to love an earthly pos- 
session and thus to draw his heart away from God he begins to 
be an idolator. While golden dollars and silver dollars and 
paper dollars, and the values which they represent, are all good 
things, excellent things, when put to their right uses, tbey are 
bad things when wrongly used. A gold coin is not the proper 
object of the heart's love. As long as it is made an instrumen- 
tality to do good with, it is a good thing to have. But it was 
never made to be loved. Whenever a man, in the church or out 
of it,b( stows his love,or the affections of his heart,upon his money, 
he at once has a golden god, or a silver god, or a paper god as 
the case may be, and he is an idolator. Covetousness closes his 
heart and his purse to the orphan's cry for bread, and the lost 
sinner's appeal for the bread of life. Though the poor sinner's 



CHRISTIAN GIVING. 149 

poor, hungry soul pleads through the tears of Jesus, through 
his crown of thorns, through his mangled bleeding hands and 
feet, through his dying groans and agonies, through his match- 
less words of love and mercy uttered on the cross and ia the 
very jaws o' death: "Father forgive them for they know not 
what they do," through his precious blood, the money-loving 
man turns a deaf ear to the pleadings of the lost soul. No won- 
der that Paul says, " The love of money is the root ef all evil " 
"The love of money" makes a man stingy, grasping, oppressive, 
hard-hearted and cruel. " The love of money" takes bread out 
of children's mouths, shoes off their feet, and turns the lonely 
widow with her hapless orphans out in the cold. " The love of 
money" withholds education from the iguorant, and the gospel 
of Christ from millions of lost sinner J . 

What is the remedy for this idolatry ? For this worship of 
the dollar god? When righteous kings of olden times would 
purge Israel of idolatry, they cut down the groves, broke down 
the altars, and ground the idols, the false gods, to powder. 
Thus they purified Israel from her idolatry. How shall we 
purge spiritual Israel of her idolatry ? Let us do like the good 
kings of Judah ! Let us smash it! Let us grind the idols to 
powder I Our idols are not money itself, but the love of it. 
How destroy the love of it and drive it out of a human heart? 
The Savior knew how to do it. He advised no half-way meas- 
ures. There came to him once a young man saying : rt Good 
Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life ?" This man was 
an idolator in that he loved this world's goods and money. 
The Master's final answer was : "Sell all that thou hast and dis- 
tribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven" 
The Savior's method ot grinding his idol to powder was to 
give his money away. That is the right remedy, the only 
remedy for a covetous heart for a stingy soul. Brother, if you 
find that the "love of money" is striking "the root of all evil" 
down into your heart, kill it, pluck it up root and branch by 
giving to the needy. Christian giving is the potent remedy. 
If your case is as desperate as that ot the ruler in the Savior's 
day, you will have to give all that you have. That was hit 
only chance and he would not do it. Rather than give all, he 
decliued the promise of eternal lite. But no man who has any 
right to call himself a Christian is so bad as that man. When 



150 THE MOBERLY PULPIT. 

he becomes such a lover of this world as was that man, he will 
have ceased to be a Christian if he ever was one. 

There are two cases where a man ought to give all One is 
the case already considered where a man has gone so far that 
his idol can only be broken by giving up all. Such a man's 
soul can only be saved by giving up all, so as utterly to blot out 
his idol. The other is in the case of necessity, to avert griev- 
ous suffering", and to preserve life. A loving father or mother 
would give all to save the life ot a darling child. The disciples 
gave all at Jerusalem soon after the first preaching of the gos- 
pel on the Pentecost day. There is no intimation that the Lord 
was not well pleased with their giving all at that time. There 
is one more case of giving all. It is when one wishes to do 
so tor the good of men and the glory of God. This is illus- 
trated by the widow's mite. She gave all, and the Lord him- 
self commended her for it. But these case* of giving all in the 
nature of things, can not and ought not to be numerous as 
compared wnh the constant aud repeated givings in which the 
lives of all Christians ought to abound. 

Christian giving, like the Christian life ought to fill up the 
entire period of time intervening between a man's conversion 
to Christ and the time ot his death. When a Christian man 
gives to-day all that he has he will likely have nothing to give 
to-morrow. "We ought to give this year, but at the same time 
remember that we shall be called upon to give next year. Let 
us remember, brethren, that giving, like prayer, singing, and 
attendance at the Lord's house, is a Christian duty. As pray- 
ing to-day does not release us from praving to-morro *, so giv- 
ing to-day does not release ub from giving to-morrow. It is a 
constant duty. 

Jt is a Christian duty to give to the following objects : 1 To 
the poor. 2. To the cause of education. 3 To the cause of 
missions. To give to the poor takes a wide range. Under it 
may be included the following proper objects : (1) Feeding the 
hungry. (2) Clothing the raked. (3) Housing rhe homeless. 
(4) Doing all these things for the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the 
lame and the insane. All orphan asylums, asylums lor the 
blind, for the deaf and dumb, for the insane and all other in- 
stitutions of like kind, of whatever name, are the outgrowth of 
Christian benevolence. The seed-thought from which they all 



CHRISTIAN GIVING. 151 

spring into life, and usefulness, came down to earth in Jesus 
Christ, when he came as God's free gift to a lost world, formu- 
lated into words when he sa ; d: '• Give to him that asketh thee : 
and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." 
"Freely you have received, freely give." This seed-thought, 
planted in the human heart by the preaching of the gospel, has 
germinated and taken root,and has now become a living thing 
in the form of homes for the friendless, skilled physicians for 
the insane and afflicted poor, accomplished instructors for the 
deaf and dumb and blind, and the weak-minded. It may be 
said that the State does these things. True ; but the State is 
the people organized. The State doing these good things is 
the ■ eople giving in their organized capacity. Where the gos- 
pel has not been preached and where Christ is not known, the 
State does not do these things. Tn these institutions the peo- 
ple do a work in the name of the State, that is, in the name of 
the people organized, which they could not do in an individual 
capacity. 

Although the State is doing so much good work, there is still 
left ample room for Christian giving in our individual capacity 
and directly iu the name of the Lord. There are plenty or poor 
and lost, and lonely, and ignorant, and suffering, whom we can 
help, and whom we must help, and do it in the Lord's name 
too, if we value our own soul's salvation. 

To give to the cause of education is a religious dut y. The 
State to a certain extent very properly gives secular education. 
But it does not and it can not give Christian education. None 
of us would be willing for the State to take control of the re- 
ligious instruction of our children. We dare not do that in 
view of the judgment to come. Religious education must be 
had in the family, in the Sunday-school, in the church and in 
schools builded and sustained by Christian giving. Such a 
school is our Female Orphan School now located at Camden 
Point. While that school has done great good, its good work 
might have been ten-fold greater had the brethren opened their 
hearts and their pocket-books more liberally thaa they have 
done. '1 he lack of sufficient means has been the one great want 
that has hindered its greater usefulness. 

Thorough Christian education can only be had in Christian 
schools, Christian colleges, and Christian universities. But 



152 TBE MOBEKLY PULPIT. 

these can never be founded and perpetuat -d without liberal 
giving. Tbe buildi igs have to be erected with the means fur- 
nished by Christian benevolence. After the buildings are 
erected and furnished there is continued need of giving. This 
is abundantly proved by all State institutions. After buildings 
are erected and furnished at public expense, the legislature and 
governor have to make appropriations every session to keep 
them going. The necessity for this proves that it U n°cessary 
to keep on, from year to yf ar, fostering our Christian collets 
by continued giving. Our liberality, dear* bre hren, ha* here- 
tofore beeu too spasmodic. We bave sometimes been full of zeal 
and have given generously and nobly and started schools with 
fine prospects, but afterwards allowed our ardor to abate, our 
zeal to grow cold, our efforts to flag and our contributions to 
cease; thus allowing our young colleges, some of them to per- 
ish from ihe face of the earth, and others to struggle with pov- 
erty for years to mai tain a precarious existence. 

Brethren and sisters, we need to have broader, deeper, high- 
er, grander and more Christlike conceptions of Christian be- 
nevolence. We must get rid of the idea that doing well one 
year is in any sense of the word a reasonable excuse for not 
doing equally well every year thereafter. Another sad mis- 
take into which many fall i-, that, when age begins to creep 
upon them they stop giv ng because they can not mike money 
as they once could, they can not labor as they once did. This 
is all wroug v.ith those who are the most able to give. Of 
course with a man who can only give of the daily labor of his 
hands, er who las no capital except his ability to work, ad- 
vancing age is a reasonable excuse. But, with those who have 
capi'al it is an unreasonable plea. It is greatly to be feared 
that it is an invention of a covetous heart to silence the remon- 
strances of a guilty conscience. The truth is that the older a 
man is who has capital, the short' r the time tbat he will need 
it himself, aud the more able he is to give to the Lurd. All 
over this country there are old people who have much more 
than they can possibly < xpend on their own reasonable wants 
while they can expect to live, wao will give little or nothiug to 
the Lord's poor or to the purpose of educat on, or to the cause 
of missions, giving ti.eir age, when pressed, as a reason lor not 
giving, when, in fact, tueir age is an indisputable proof that they 
will need but little of their possession. 



CHRISTIAN GIVING 153 

The third object to which, in additio 1 to giving to the poor 
and to the cause of education, we ought to give contiauously, is 
the work of missions Ever since Jesus said : " G-o teach all 
nations;" " Go ye into all the world and pr» ach the gospel to 
every creature," it has been th^ duty of his disciples 10 sh ulder 
the responsibility and see that the gospel is carried int > all parts 
of the world The obligation rests on th-j whole church, and 
every member of the church has his share of the responsibility. 
The man who g< es in pers< n to preachCbristin the far offregion9 
of the earth obeys ihe precepts ( f tr e great commission. The man 
who gives of his earnings and of his goods to feed and clothe 
the man who goes, also obeys the commission. But the man 
who neither goes nor gives anything to him who does go, lives 
in violation of the authority of the Great King who gave the 
commisson. He, who gives nothing to further on the work of 
the commission's a sinner against ihe Lord Jesus Christ. ''Sin 
is the transgression of the law." The great commission is the 
law of Christ, and he who neglects or refuses to help carry it out 
transgresses the law of Christ and thereby becomes a sinner. 
Let us be very careful brethren that we c >mply with the re- 
quirement of our dear Savior. Let us not disregard his au- 
thority. 

We come now to ask the question : Why all this giving ? Why 
has God required that we should give ? There is more than one 
why. We are called upou to give to the poor that their wants 
may be supplied. That is a good reason. We are called upon 
to give to the cause of education that the ignorant may be en- 
lightened and cultivated and refined. That also is a good rea- 
son for giving. We are expected to give to missions that sin- 
ners may believe in Christ and be saved. That is a most ex- 
cellent reason for giving. Again, the Master commands us to 
give, and lhat fact constitutes a sufficient reason for giving. 
But there is another reason, an all-powerful reason, why we 
should all be givers and liberal fivers at that. Jesus said : " It 
is more blessed to give, than to receive " Here is another most 
potent reason for giving. Jt is : that the giver may have a bless- 
ing, and that, a greater, grander, aud bet'er blessing thau he 
bestows upon another. When you my brother, my sister, give 
food to a hungry, starving fellow -being you confer upon hitn a 
needed blessing, but you will get a greater one; you benefit his 



154 THE MOBEBLY PULPIT. 

body, but you enrich your owu soul. When you bring under 
your hospitable roof a homeless orphan child, you confer upon 
it a great blessing, but you get a greater one. While you are 
giving the orphan an earthly home, you are securing for your- 
self a heavenly home. 

How is it true that "It is more bles-ed to give, than to re- 
ceive?" Let us, brethren, carefully loot at this question in the 
light ol facts. 1. You, brethren and sisters, are candidates for 
heaven. 2. The society of heaven is pure and Godlike rnd 
there is no discord there. 3. Every spiritual intelligence ever 
admitted there must be in union with God. To be unlike him 
will exclude from heaven. 4. God is an unselfi-h giver. 5. 
When you unselfishly give you act like God. You are animated 
by the same spirit and desire to do others good. Your heart is 
more completely transformed into the divine image by giving 
than in any other way. Thus, my brother, when you give, you 
supply another's want, but you make yourself like Gcd, and 
there is no blessing equal to being li&e the heavenly Father. 

Thus the stingy man, who selfishly refuses to give, in so do'ng 
cheats his own soul out of the highest possible good to which 
it may attain. He thus disqualifies himself for the society of 
the kingdom above. For a few paltry dollars, that belong to 
the Lord, and that he covetously ties up in his own pocket, he 
sells his mansion in the Father's house, his crown of glory, his 
share in the tree of life and in the river of water of life. Eter- 
al life bartered away to gratify a selfish disposition for a few 
days on earth ! 

Brethren, let us all become givers! While there is some lib. 
eral giving, it is largely done by the few, while the many have 
not been doing much. Whenever we all become givers, the 
Lord's work will move grandly on. Our schools, our colleges, 
and our missions would all be prosperous. Our churches would 
be warm, zealous, and happy. Sinners would be converted and 
the word of life would be rapidly carried to the uttermost parts 
of the earth. Our souls would be fitted for the joys of the 
world to come. 

That we may all be stirred up to more zeal, to more love, to 
more prayer and to more Christian giving in this life, and that 
we may so live, and so work, that we may be crowned with 
glory in the everlasting kingdom is my prayer for Christ's sake. 



SERMON XII, 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 

Delivered before the Trustees, Professors, Students 
and Patrons of Christian University, Canton, Mis- 
souri, June 2, 1881. 



Text.— "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wiadom — 

Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees : 

I appear before you and in the presence of the professors, 
stud* nts, patrons and friends of Christian University to receive 
from your hands the honorable office of President of this insti- 
tution, to which you have elected me, and at this hour to assume 
the responsibilities and begin to discharge the duties of the 
office. 

Jt is meet that I should give expression to my own convictions 
as to what collegiate education ought to be, and to my own 
determination as to the work of the University while I shall be 
its presiding officer. 

1. I believe that every human being will continue to exist 
eternally. I have no idea that a man will ever cease to be. I 
believe that, while the endless agrs of eternity continue to be, 
man will have a conscious existence without cessation of being. 

2. I believe that whether that endless conscious being shall be 
happy or miserable depends upon the character of the life lived 
in this world. 

3. I believe that the eternal, self-existing God created man 
designing him for both usefulness and happiness, designing him 
to be happy and to make others happy. 

4. I believe that all education, whether in the family, or in 

155 



156 THE MOBERLY PULPIT 

the church, or m the college, ough' to be such as to prepare the 
pupil for happiness and usefulness both in this world and the 
world to come, and such as to avoid misery and wretchedness, 
both in (he life that now is and that which is to come. 

5. I believe thdt inasmuch as every human being is possessed 
of a body, an intellect and a spirit, and inasmuch as either 
happiness or misery may come from the body or the intellect, 
or the spirit, all education, whether collegiite or otherwise, 
ought to take account of the bodily, the intellectual and the 
spiritual nature of humanity, ought to preserve the cqui ibri'jm 
of body, intellect and spirit. ]t is not desirable to make physi- 
cal giants, and mental and moral dwarfs. Nor is it desirable to 
make mental giants, and physical and moral dwarfs. Nor is it 
desirable to make, even, moral giants, and physical and mental 
dwarfs. But it is very desirable to develop all the three natures 
evenly balanced. This will make a happy m^n and one who can 
be useful, dispensing blessings all along the pathway of life. 

6. Believing as I do, that the Bible is God's revelation to men, 
giving us the true Ir story of our origin, and a perftct standard 
of morals and right, for the life that now is, a<>d opening to us 
the portals of the eternal future, I shall, to the best of my 
ability, seek to lead my pupils in the departments of ' Sacred 
History" and "Sacred Literature " to a correct understanding 
of its truths and principles. Indeed, it shall be my endeavor to 
inspire all the students who may hereafter attend the insti ution 
with profound reverence for its pure principles and unwavering 
faith in its facts, its promises and its threatenings. 

7. It shall be my most earnest desire and effort to have all the 
work in all the departments ot the Univer ity thoroughly done. 
I can say in truth that I have all my life loved thoroughness and 
despised superficiality. In this desire I feel perfectly c-rtain of 
the sympathy and co-operation of the accomplished and schol- 
arly gentlemen who will be my associates in the Faculty. I 
also feel confident of the moral support and approbation of you 
gentlemen of the Board, in my effort to have all that w^ do, 
well done. With all this I shall still need the help of the 
stucUnts to make the institution continue to maintain a high 
character for thoroughness. The best teachers in the world can 
not make accurate scholars out of students who will not persist- 
ently study their lessons. But when teachers and pupils work 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 157 

earnestly and faithfully together in love, the result is sure to be 
close, critical scholarship, creditable alike to teacher and pnpils. 

8. It shall be my purpose to enlarge the usefulness of the 
University in every way that I can possibly. I shall use all my 
energies to increase the number of students. That is the first 
consideration in enlarging the field of good work. We can 
instruct double the number of pupils just as well, and without 
increase of expense, as the number usually in attendance. I 
appeal to you gentlemen of the Board, and the professors, and 
to the citizens of Canton generally, to help me in this effort. 
There are hundreds of young gentlemen and young ladies in 
the country who ought to have a better education than they can 
get in their own neighborhood. Some of them will come to 
( hristian University if the claims ot the institution and its 
facilities for doing them good can only be placed before them. 
Let us all unite our efforts this summer to get the school more 
fully before the public than has yet been done. 

9. With the rules and regulations of the school as published 
in the last catalogue I am satisfied, and would not recommend 
any changes now. It shall be my aim to live up to those rules 
myself and I shall regard it my duty to kindly and mildly, but 
firmly and faithfully enforce them. 

10. The library ought to be enlarged. Whenever and wher- 
ever I can secure a good book I will do it. I venture to suggest 
to every friend of the University to do the same thiug. Let us 
enlarge our facilities for usefulness whenever we can without 
^oing in debt. \ understand that there is no debt hanging over 
this building, nor this corporation. Let us all set our faces like 
flint against going in debt. 

11. I appeal to all graduates of the Univen-ity, and specially 
to the young ladies and gentlemen w ho have just received their 
diplomas, to remember their Alma Mater with atiection. They 
will have it often in their power to render her assistance by 
influencing both ladies and gentlemen to become students. 
Every graduate must have a field of labor and usefulness some- 
where. Wherever that field may be there will be young people 
who ought to go to school, who ought to aspire to a go d 
education. r > o these young people they can say: "Christian 
University, at Canton, Mo., is a good p'ace to obtain a superior 
education, Christian education. Canton is, a good town. Her 



158 MOBERLY PULPIT. 

citizens are intelligent, virtuous, enterprising, Christian and 
hospitable." The graduate can say this with telling effect, for 
he or she has been here and can speak from experience. We 
appeal with confidence to the graduates for their sympathy aud 
help in sending us new students, in increasing the library, in 
sending specimens to the museum. 

12. I must now be allowed to address myself to the students 
ot the present session who are no r yet graduates L most 
heartily invite you to return next session, and the next until 
your scholarship will justity the Faculty in giving you each a 
diploma. I have one more request to make of each student. 
That is that each one of you make a spec : al effort to bring a 
new s udent with you next September. Many of you can do it 
if you will try in good earnest Try has accomplished wonders 
and can do it again. 

13. I also desire to say to the profe-sors that I expect to enjoy 
being a co-laborer with them I trust that we shall be able to 
work together as one man for the prosperity <>f the University, 
the good of the students committed to our keeping, and for the 
glory of God. Let us be " Knit together in love," constantly 
"endeavoring to keep the unity ot the Spi.'it in the bond of 
peace " Let us be sure that we comply in our own persons and 
in our own hearts with Paul's injunction to the Colossians, when 
he says to them: " Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in 
all wisdom." Whether we teach the languages, or mathematics 
or the scieuces, u e shall need to have our own hearts full of the 
word of Cnrist, so that our words and our daily lives shall be 
the outgrowth of his teachings. Let our daily lives be a 
C' nstant exhibition of the Spirit of the great Teacher. Let us 
remember that our pupils need not only to be fitted for the 
enjoyments of this earth-life of "three score aud ten," less or 
more, and for its duties, but they are also to be fitted to fill 
places of honor and bliss in "the everlasting kingdom of our 
Lord aud Savior Jesus Christ." With "the word of Christ" 
dwelling in us " richly in all wisdom," we shall constitute a band 
of brothers willing and g'ad to help one another aud bear one 
an ther's burden-. In tbatw ay and in that spirit, dear brothers, 
we shall, with the Lord's help, be able to bear the burdens of 
Christian University and carry her onward aud upward, h'gher 
and still higher in her career of usefulness, dispensing b'essiugs 
on every hand a'ong her upward pathway of glory. 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 159 

14. And finally, permit me to express my feelings toward the 
man whom I am to succeed. He is my brother beloved in the 
Lord. My personal acquaintance with him began since his 
coming to Canton. I knew him before as a public man, but had 
not seen his face nor heard his voice. We first met face to fac* 
at a lonely railroad station about three years ago. At that little 
railroad depot, without anybody to introduce us, we became 
acquainted. By his manly, gentlemanly, Christian bf aring, R. 
Lin ave won my heart then and there, and we have been fasr, 
friends ever since. No man has won my love more rapidly than 
he. My best wishes and my prayers shall go with him to his 
new field of work. I *hall also feel stronger for my own dudes iu 
full belief that I shall have his sympathy End his prayers for my 
success. I shall feel free to counsel with him and be assisted by 
his advice. Though bodily we shall be hundreds of miles apart, 
iu affection and spirit we shall be very close together. 

Now, gentlemen of the Board of Trustees, with humble and 
confident reliance upon the God of Israel for help and strength, 
rather than upon myself, I am ready to assume the duties of the 
office to which you have elected me, fully expecting your wise 
counsel and co-operation as long as I shall be the Presideut of 
Christian University. 



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